rare with us. You can tell him instantly by 

 his brighter color and his beautiful crimson 

 breast. Sometimes the flocks contain a few c^ 

 young males ; but until the first mating sea- f^nsfmas 

 son has tipped their breast feathers with 

 deep crimson, they are almost indistinguish- 

 able from their sober-colored companions. 



This crimson breast shield, by the way, is 

 the family mark or coat of arms of the gros- 

 beaks, just as the scarlet crest marks all the 

 woodpeckers. And if you ask a Micmac, 

 deep in the woods, how the grosbeak got 

 his shield, he may tell you a story that will 

 interest you as did the legend of Hiawatha 

 and the woodpecker in your childhood days. 



If the old male, with his proud crimson, 

 be rare with us, his beautiful song is still 

 more so. Only in the deep forests, by the 

 lonely rivers of the far North, where no 

 human ear ever hears, does he greet the 

 sunrise from the top of some lofty spruce. 

 There also he pours into the ears of his 

 sober little gray wife the sweetest love song 

 of the birds. It is a flood of soft warbling 

 notes, tinkling like a brook deep under the 



