324 CEDARBIRD. 
kalmias can be introduced into the gardens, hardly anything more beautiful can be 
imagined. The large and dense beds of broad-leaved evergreen rhododendrons, every 
bush covered in May and June with gorgeous flower trusses, the fragrant and bright 
hued azaleas (mostly hybrids of Azalea pontica and our American species), the white 
bells of the andromedas, the beautiful rosy fringed flower cups of the kalmias vie in 
beauty with camellias, Indian azaleas, gardenias (Cape jasmines), and magnolias of the 
South Atlantic and Gulf States. When the bloom has quite passed away, other plants 
emerge from among the rhododendron bushes. The golden-banded lily’, the meadow lily’, 
the Canada’, Japan’, tiger®, Humboldt*, and Washington lily’, lobelias and other plants 
lift their heads above these shrubs, exhibiting flowers of wonderful beauty and fragrance. 
In such parts of our country, where the climate is more severe, the mock orange, 
upright and twining honey-suckles, weigelias, spireas, snowball bushes, the wild crab 
trees, white-thorns, groups of evergreens and other trees would create, in addition 
to a good orchard, an almost ideal home, especially when the birds, whose chief 
mission seems to be the enlivening of the scenes of nature, make their appearance 
in goodly numbers. In such gardens or in parks of dense shrubbery, shade and 
ornamental trees, supplied with numerous nesting-boxes, the Bluebirds, Wrens, Titmice, 
Martins, Great-crested Flycatchers will make themselves at home. If we stroll around 
in such a place in early June, we will notice that most of the feathered favorites are 
busy hatching or feeding their young. All nature seems to have put on holiday clothes, 
and cheery life reigns all around. Plant life is then also at its best, in its fullest glory. 
We hear the flute-like notes of the Robin, the caressing warble of the Bluebird, the sweet 
melodies of one of our best songsters, the Catbird, the lays of the Song Sparrow and 
Chipping-bird, the songs of the Thrasher, the Vireo, the Summer Yellow-bird, the Gold- 
finch, etc. They all are, thanks to the protection they receive from the owner, very 
confiding. Yet one of our handsomest and most peculiar feathered dwellers of the 
garden is still missing. That rover must be tarrying in far away places, mayhap in 
the South among palmettos and magnolias, or among the trees covered with orchids, 
bromeliads, and other epyphital plants of Mexico and Central America. Perhaps it 
forms one of a swarm roving about in a neighboring county or State. At last these 
birds appear. In noiseless, rapid flight they arrive, alighting suddenly, as if by military 
command, in the topmost part of some high tree. From that elevated position they all 
look about, stretching their necks and raising the -tufts of their heads. This late 
arrival is the CEpaRBIRD, known also by the names of CarRoLina WaxwiNc, SMALL 
Waxwine, LirrLE Waxwinc, CEDAR WAXxwWING, CHERRY and SPIDER-BIRD. It belongs 
to the latest bird arrivals in our northern gardens, though many of them winter in 
the North. . ; 
Our Cedar Waxwing is a dignified and beautiful bird. The highly elegant coloring 
of the soft plumage reminds one of both the North and the tropics. The ground-color 
is a mixture of ash-gray, wine-red, and chestnut-brown, from their light tints increasing 
to even a deep black, these hues in their gradual shadings and variations producing a 
mild effect, finely contrasting with the rich yellow of the edge of the tail and the 
1 Lilium auratum, 2 L, superbum, ® L. Canadense, 4 L. speciosum. 5 L, tigrinum, 6 L. Humboldti. 7 L, Wash- 
ingtonianum, 
