186 LAND-BIRDS. 



autumn and winter. What more could have been reasonably 

 asked than that these birds should be finely colored, sing 

 sweetly, have a variety of charming notes, possess a peculiar 

 flight and attractive habits, be common and resident through- 

 out the year, and frequent the neighborhood of man ? 



B. PINUS. Pine Finch. " Siskin." An irregular winter 

 visitor to Massachusetts, occasionally lingering here until 

 June, and having been known to breed at Cambridge.* 



a. About 4| inches long. Flaxen ; paler below. Thickly 

 streaked with darker, rather finely so on the head and under 

 parts. Wings and tail, black, with much yellow, which, in the 

 breeding season, is more or less suffused throughout the plu- 

 mage. 



b. Dr. Brewer says : " Early in May, 1859, a pair of these 

 birds built their nest in the garden of Professor Benjamin 

 Peirce, in Cambridge, Mass., near the colleges. It was found 

 on the 9th by Mr. Frederick Ware, and already contained its 

 full complement of four eggs,f partly incubated." " The eggs 

 are of an oblong-oval shape, of a light green ground-color, 

 spotted, chiefly at the larger end, with markings of a light 

 rusty brown. They measure .71 by .50 of an inch." 



c. So irregular are the habits of the American " Siskins " 

 that I have never clearly understood their distribution and 

 annual movements. Though these birds have been known to 

 breed exceptionally at Cambridge, in Massachusetts, they 

 usually breed in New England only to the northward of that 

 State, such as in certain places among the White Mountains 

 and about Lake Umbagog. They are sometimes common in 

 Massachusetts during the winter, and at other times are alto- 

 gether absent then, presumably, in the latter case, not passing 

 to the southward of their summer range. And yet they are 



* A common resident of northern t One of these eggs — f aded, dnst- 

 New England, visiting southern New stained, and partly broken — is still 

 England at irregular intervals in au- preserved in the collection of the Mu- 

 tumn and winter, often oocnrring in seum of Comparative Zoology at Gam- 

 immense numbers at the former season, bridge. — W. B. 

 Its nest and eggs have been twice taken 

 in Massachusetts. — W. B. 



