A PUZZLE IN BIRDS 



then stand and look at me from the lowest branches of 

 the pines. Usually all these Northern birds have dis- 

 appeared by the last of March or first of April. 



In the winter of 1899-1900 both the crossbills were 

 abundant, especially the usually rarer White-winged 

 bird. It was a beautiful sight to see a flock of them 

 almost daily on my lawn, picking up maple seed or 

 other food. They were fairly tame, yet never so much 

 so as a pair of White-wings that I found on the top of 

 Bird Rock, far out at sea, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

 These were so tame that I actually caught them as they 

 fed on some oats which I put out on the grass for them. 

 They were very much emaciated, so I put them in a 

 cage to have a good meal, but there they acted so 

 frightened that we let them go and they returned at 

 once to the oats. While they munched away at a pile 

 of these, like little horses, I set up a camera on the 

 tripod within two feet of them and photographed them 

 without alarming them in the least. 



Early one morning in January, 1907, Ned came 

 rushing in to inform me that a flock of Pine Grosbeaks 

 were right by the doorstep. Sure enough, there were 

 half a dozen of them, feeding in the path where the 

 heavy snowfall had been shovelled ofl^. They seemed 

 to be picking up little sticks and biting off the ends, but 

 I soon found that these were the winged seeds of our 

 ash and maple trees, from which they were extracting 

 the kernels. From that time on till the middle of 

 March, they were our almost constant visitors. They 



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