go Tue Birps Asout Us. 
too, at this time, and a good many were killed, of 
course. 
The Pine Grosbeak, a dull-red bird with white 
wing-bands, is another winter visitor, and the weather 
has to be very snowy to bring him down very far 
from his native haunts. The few records I have of 
this bird are all connected with phenomenal snow- 
falls and not of the ordinary steady cold weather. 
This reminds me that the reading-matter in our 
many bird books is rather confusing. The general 
ornithologies say the pine grosbeak is very rare, of 
“accidental occurrence,” and so on; but in the bird- 
full winter of 1889-90, Dr. Warren records, in his 
“Birds of Pennsylvania,” receiving forty specimens, 
and refers to the bird simply as “irregular.” Con- 
sidering the hot reception they receive, even with the 
temperature at zero, it is not strange that they are 
irregular. The wonder is that they do not learn 
enough to keep altogether away. 
Writing of this grosbeak, as seen in the mountains 
of Colorado, T. M. Trippe informs Dr. Coues that 
“Tt is very tame, frequently alighting and feeding within a few 
feet of one with the greatest composure. Its food seems to consist 
principally of pine-seeds, but it is also fond of those of the birch 
and alder, and occasionally descends to the ground, where it picks 
up the seeds of various plants and probably a few insects. During 
late summer and winter it has a very pleasing song,—clear, sweet, 
and flowing like that of the purple finch.’’ 
In the Purple Finch we have a delightful New 
England bird that comes into the Middle States and 
southward every autumn, and while here is provok- 
ingly silent, except that certain localities in Penn- 
