BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 259 



147. Acanthis linaria holbcellii (Brehm). 

 Holboll's Redpoll. 



Very rare winter visitor. 



148. Acanthis linaria rostrata (Coues). 

 Greater Redpoll. 



Irregular winter visitor, sometimes rather common. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



November 25, 1889, one female 1 taken, Belmont, W. Brewster. 

 November 28 — February 15. 



Redpolls, like Crossbills and Pine Grosbeaks, are conspicuously irregular in 

 respect to their visits to eastern Massachusetts. Sometimes they are nearly or 

 quite absent for several successive years ; again they may appear in but limited 

 numbers and perhaps only during January or February ; but ordinarily, when 

 they come at all, they are abundant from mid-autumn to well into the following 

 spring, the first flights arriving soon after the middle of October and the last 

 stragglers departing early in April. From November to March they often fre- 

 quent the entire Cambridge Region, where they feed chiefly on the seeds of weeds 

 in neglected fields and on those of birches and alders in the woods, although we 

 see them everywhere on wing, roving restlessly from place to place in flocks 

 containing from half a dozen to more than one hundred birds each. 



My only local records of Hoary Redpolls are as follows : — 



On March s, 1879, a female, now in my collection, was taken in Waltham by 

 Messrs. E. A. and O. Bangs. 



On November 15, 1880, an immature male "was killed in Cambridge by Mr. 

 H. M. Spelman who still has the specimen in his collection. 



On March 20, 1888, Mr. Walter Faxon met with a Hoary Redpoll in Waltham. 

 Howe and Allen state s that this bird was " taken," but Mr. Faxon writes me that it 

 was merely " seen at close range, a very white one, but I had no gun and so it returned, 

 I suppose, to Greenland." 



1 No. 30,285, collection of William Brewster. 



'Originally recorded by W. Brewster, Auk, IV, 1887, 163. 



' R. H. Howe, Jr., and G. M. Allen, Birds of Massachusetts, 1901, 130. 



