A Brewer Blackbird Roost 53 



To an easterner, however, it was a most interesting- as- 

 sembly, and three days later — on September 9 — I returned 

 to the place before six o'clock in order to see the birds come 

 into the roost. Blocks away, Blackbird notes were heard, 

 individuals were seen flying high overhead, and small squads 

 were passed perched on telephone poles. When I reached 

 the seven narrow spired cypresses the voices became louder. 

 Some of the birds were already in the trees, while bands 

 were in the street and on the telephone wires. I had not 

 come early enough. Others, mostly in small squads, kept 

 coming from up street, from down street, and from across 

 the orange groves, while approaching black flocks crossed a 

 patch of sunset sky. 



Some of the birds that lit on the telephone wires would 

 find it hard to keep their balance, tipping up their tails to 

 steady themselves ; but others, better acrobats, would sit and 

 calmly preen their feathers. If a newcomer tried to light too 

 near one already there, he was sometimes pecked at, some- 

 times merely repelled by an inhospitable reception. On go- 

 ing to the cypresses the birds would light on the projecting 

 tips of the branches and gradually work their way back into 

 the dense evergreen mass. A puffing automobile sent a few fly- 

 ing, and a rattling trolley car sent a large number from the 

 cypresses down into the orange grove behind them. The 

 numbers entering the roost began to fall off after 6 :1.5, and 

 about 6 :25 I started home. 



While the birds were flying about men, women, and even 

 boys went by without apparently noticing the presence of the 

 roost, though now and then some one casually glanced 

 that way. This was doubtless because it was an old story, 

 for as I was informed later by Judge Warren, who lived 

 across the street, the Blackbirds had occupied the roost for 

 three or four years, coming in large numbers, spring and 

 fall, so regularly that he looked for them every year. A few, 

 he said, remained through the summer and also through the 

 winter. 



Wanting to see the Blackbirds come out of the cypresses 



