CHAPTER V. 



THE CEDAR-BIRD. 



ON the twenty-seventh of May, I saw a small company of birds settling in the top- 

 most branches of an elm. You might infer from their behavior that the}- were 

 new arrivals. They keep together, sit prim and erect, and move about as if 

 under discipline. With a glass you can see their erected crests, their sleek drab plumage, 

 and recognize at once the familiar Cedar or Cherry Bird. 



At Northfield, New Hampshire, the earliest nests have eggs by the first or second 

 week in June, but the breeding season is not at its lieight until the last of July or August. 

 A few still have young in the nest in early September, when many are flocking or have 

 already started southward. Professor Baird speaks of finding these birds sitting on their 

 unhatched eggs as late as the twelfth day of October. 



The winter flocks of Cedar Waxwings, which are occasionally seen in Northern New 

 England, are probably migrants whose summer home is farther north. 



The Cedar-birds borrow no trouble from their neighbors, and seem to lead a life of 

 ease and pleasure, lessening their denominator when the times are hard, but living high 

 when cherries are ripe. The nesting season, which brings much that is sweet and bitter 

 to the lives of most birds, appears to give them the least anxiety. The immaturity of 

 their eggs at a time when most of our birds have already reared their first broods is a 

 striking fact, and is due to some unknown cause which retards the growth of the ovaries. 

 It is evidently not caused by a lack of suitable food as some have supposed, since the 

 case of the Goldfinch is similar. The young Cedar-bird gets about the same kind of food 

 as the young Robin or Oriole, and it is not likely that a greater or less amount of fruit in 

 the diet of old or young would sensibly alter their condition. So quiet and retired is the 

 Cedar-bird, it may live in comparative seclusion although not three rods from your house, 

 and may remain on your grounds for the whole summer unnoticed, unless some one is on 

 the watch, so that the name "chatterer" formerly applied to the family,' can have only 

 an ironical significance in this least garrulous of birds. The fondness of this bird for the 

 berries of the red cedar and for cherries is responsible for two of its commonest names, 

 while the term " waxwing " has reference to the peculiar horny scales of the secondary 

 wing-quills, which look as if tipped with red sealing-wax. Less commonly, the tail also 

 bears similar appendages, but there is much variation in their appearance in both old and 



' This epithet is said to liave Ijeeii first applied to the Bohemian Waxwing, because of its Latin name, Aiiipclis 

 garruhis, the s])ecific term i^arrulu.^ iiaving Ijeen suggested Ijy tlie crest and sliglit resemblance in the color of this 

 bird to the European [ay, Garriiliis i^laiidariiis. See Schufeldt, C/iaph-rs on the Xatiiral History of llic Cnilod 

 States. 



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