22 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
place I had found his nest the spring before, made of 
twigs and strips of bark and lined with grass and roots 
and holding three speckled eggs. It was the cardinal 
grosbeak, another bird unknown to me in New Eng- 
land. No matter how often I .meet this crimson- 
crested grosbeak, he will never become a common 
bird to me. Each time I see him I feel again some- 
thing of the thrill which came over me when I first 
met this singer from the southland in a thicket on 
the edge of Philadelphia. With the Carolina wren 
and the tufted titmouse, the cardinal grosbeak 
completes a trio of birds that can never be common- 
place to one born north of Central Park, New York, 
which is about the limit of their northern range. 
To-day, as I watched my flaming cardinal, he sud. 
denly dived stiffly into the heart of the thicket. 
A moment later from its midst sounded a clear, 
loud whistle, “‘Whit, whit, whit.’”’ I answered him, 
for this is one of the few bird-calls I can imitate. 
Before long his dove-colored mate also appeared. 
Her wings and tail were of a duller red, while the 
upper-parts of her sleek body were of a brownish-ash 
tint. The throat and a patch by the base of the bill 
were black in both. As I watched, the singer in the 
thicket added to his whistle the word “‘Teu, teu, teu, 
teu” and then finally ran them together — ‘‘ Whee- 
teu, whee-teu, whee-teu,”’ so rapidly whistled that 
it sounded almost like a single note. 
On the way back to breakfast, as the sun came up 
and warmed a slope of the woods, a flock of slate- 
colored juncos burst out altogether in a chorus of 
