RED-POLL LINNET, 



Acanthis linaria Bonaparte. 



Plate XXI. Fig. 3. 



LTHOUGH it is midwinter, the banks of some rapidly flowing creeks and 

 '^■^ bubbling springs are the chosen haunts of bird-life. Where the water boils and 

 foams around a moss-covered boulder, where dense shrubbery and masses of evergreens 

 skirt the banks and the near surroundings, we may be sure to meet quite a ijumber of 

 birds in spite of the extremely cold weather. On sunny, warm winter days the Tree 

 Sparrow sings almost as fervently as in spring. The Blue Jays rove around in flocks, 

 making the woodland ring with their loud, harsh, jay, jay. Pine Grosbeaks and Cross- 

 bills are always seen in flocks, and they feel quite at home among the sombre green of 

 the young pines. We also find that brutal highway robber, the Great Northern Shrike, 

 killing many an innocent Finch or Titmouse wherever small birds congregate. The birds 

 being common summer sojourners among the pines, hemlocks, birches, and elms, are gone. 

 The sprightly Yellow^ Warbler feels just as happy in the gardens of Georgetown, British 

 Guiana, among the tropical trees covered with the gorgeous Bignonia venusta, B. Cberere, 

 and the beautifiil eta and royal palms, as in the maples and other trees of its summer 

 home. The charming Rose-breasted Grosbeak and the Scarlet Tanager, who both are 

 denizens of these woodlands in summer, do now epliven the trees and palms of Venezuela 

 and Colombia. The trees of their winter quarters are quite different from those of their 

 northern breeding ranges, providing congenial homes for ferns, mosses, orchids, philo- 

 dendrons, anthuriums, and other epiphytal plants. 



One of the most common birds in our northern winter landscapes, and even 

 in the gardens and parks of populated cities, is the Red-poll . Linnet, usually 

 called the Red-poll,, a bird whose breeding range is limited by the Hudsonian Fauna. 

 Like the Evening and Pine Grosbeaks, the Crossbills, Bohemian Waxwings, and other 

 bo^real birds, which come to us from the high north, the Red-poll also occurs usually 

 in very large flocks, or in company with the birds just mentioned. Flocks from 

 twenty-five to a hundred and more individuals are frequently seen. Like the above 

 named species it is irregular in its movements, and we never can rely on its appearance. 

 It may occur that these birds remain with us for two successive winters, but this may 

 not happen again for the next five or six years. Doubtless their wandering to southern 

 regions is due to the abundant or scarce food supply of their native land. In case the 

 birch and alder yield an abundance of seed, they do not appear in our country, but 

 if the food supply is short they are forced to move southward. At such times these 

 beautiful and lively little birds pass the boundary line of the Northern States in great 

 numbers. 



Sometimes they arrive in Wisconsin and northern Illinois in November, but usually 

 they are not seen before Christmas or the first of January, and they remain generally 

 until March 1. The flocks roam about in the gardens among the evergreens, in weed3' 

 fields, in the thickets of the lowlands and tamarack swamps, in the shrubbery along 



