316 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



May 21, 1856. Saw two splendid rose-breasted gros- 

 beaks with females in the young wood in Emerson's lot. 

 What strong-colored fellows, black, white, and fiery 

 rose-red breasts ! Strong-natured, too, with their stout 

 bills. A clear, sweet singer, like a tanager but hoarse 

 somewhat, 1 and not shy. 



July 15, 1858. At the base of the mountain, 2 over 

 the road, heard (and saw), at the same place where I 

 heard him the evening before, a splendid rose-breasted 

 grosbeak singing. I had before mistaken him at first 

 for a tanager, then for a red-eye, but was not satisfied ; 

 but now, with my glass, I distinguished him sitting 

 quite still, high above the road at the entrance of the 

 mountain-path in the deep woods, and singing stead- 

 ily for twenty minutes. It was remarkable for sitting 

 so still and where yesterday. It was much richer and 

 sweeter and, I think, more powerful than the note of 

 the tanager or red-eye. It had not the hoarseness of 

 the tanager, and more sweetness and fullness than the 

 red-eye. Wilson does not give their breeding-place. 

 Nuttall quotes Pennant as saying that some breed in 

 New York but most further north. They, too, appear 

 to breed about the White Mountains. 



June 2, 1859. Found within three rods of Flint's 

 Pond a rose-breasted grosbeak's nest. It was in a 

 thicket where there was much cat-briar, in a high blue- 

 berry bush, some five feet from the ground, in the forks 

 of the bush, and of very loose construction, being made 



1 [The song-, of course, is not really hoarse as compared with the 

 tanager's. See p. 317.] 



2 [Mt. Lafayette.] 



