BUZZARD'S REST. 49 



truthfully be said, I think, of our purple grakle, a bird 

 that in many ways resembles the rook. 



Until birds are marked, it may not be possible to 

 prove them permanently mated, but I venture to assert 

 that the general impression of such as will take the trou- 

 ble to study particularly our resident birds for several 

 years, will coincide with my own, that courtship and 

 marriage are not repeated, year after year, with the reg- 

 ularity of the coming and going of the seasons. 



The same may be said of the common cedar-bird. 

 This species is peculiar in that it is permanently grega- 

 rious. During the breeding season, which is often as late 

 as July and August, the several pairs forming each 

 flock breed at the same time, and with the nests quite 

 near each other. In one instance, I found two nests 

 upon one tree, and on each of five trees, but a rod or 

 two distant, a single nest. This sociability is maintained 

 during the five or six weeks that they are held in one 

 locality by the care of their offspring; and when the 

 latter are ready to leave the nest, they remain with their 

 parents. 



If such 6mall flocks, of not more than twenty or thirty, 

 were not permanently mated, there would be quarrelling 

 continually among them, unless it always happened that 

 in every one of them there were an equal number of 

 each sex. If the flocks were made up in any hap-hazard 

 manner, as is probably the case with the enormous gath- 

 erings of red - winged blackbirds, an excess of one sex 

 over the other would probably result, and a general 

 breaking up of all such gatherings, late in the winter or 

 in early spring, would necessarily result ; .but the smaller 

 3 



