6
1898.
March 1
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  Raw but not cold with light E. wind and wan sunlight
coming through a veil of thin clouds. Ther. 28[degrees] at sunrise.
  At about 11 A.M. I heard a Purple Finch singing
in the garden and soon afterwards caught sight of
the bird, a fine, rosy male sitting in the top of a
willow near the museum. It did not give the full
song but warbled in low, somewhat broken tones at
intervals of a minute or two for ten or twelve minutes
at the end of which it flew into the top of a
cedar where it joined five other birds of the same
species but all in the gray plumage. The flock
continued in this tree for some time feeding on
the juniper berries. A little later I saw the rosy 
male bathing in a puddle of melted snow near
the garden walk. It must have been a chilly
bath but the bird performed its ablutions very thoroughly
not ceasing unit its plumage was completely drenched.
R.H. Howe Jr. has seen Purple Finches at intervals
through January and February in Brookline but
these are the first that have appeared in Cambridge.
[margin]Purple
Finches
arrive[/margin]
  Where are the Cedar - birds? A small flock was
seen in Belmont in December and Torrey met with
a very large flock (upwards of 100) at Wellesley Hills
early in the winter but if the usual February flight
has come up from the South none of its numbers
have visited this immediate neighborhood for had
they done so they would surely have appeared in
our garden. My Parkman's apple has a good crop of
fruit and some of the hawthorns are covered with berries
[margin]absence of
Cedar birds[/margin]