3S2 
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Pine Grosbeaks as Pets. 
East Montpelier, Vt., IS larch 2Z.— Editor Forest and 
Stream.— I have been interested reading the accounts in 
Forest and Stream, by your many correspondents of 
the ways of feeding the starving birds this cold, hard win- 
ter. One of the coldest days a bird flew, or dropped, 
into our yard, and could not rise again. We picked it up, 
took it into the house and put it in a moderately warm 
room. In a short time it regained strength enough to 
stand. We put it into a cage, thinking to release it as 
soon as the weather would permit The next day and 
the next were still cold and windy. In the meantime, we 
began to get interested in our find. By the third day she 
was so tame she would light on our hand ard eat seeds 
without the least signs of fear. We thought, perhaps, it 
might be an escaped cage bird. This thought banished 
all idea of giving her her liberty in the continued cold 
weather. 
She soon was a great pet in the family, and we began 
to cast about to learn, if possible, to what variety she 
belonged. In my inquiry I heard of a flock that answered 
to her description in an orchard eating frozen apples in a 
neighboring town. 
I looked them up and found them the same as our bird, 
the males being red. 
I tried to trap a male for two days without success. 
Left my trap with a friend and the next day got a tele- 
phone dispatch that he had one. We have them now in a 
large cage about four feet long. The male bird by the 
third day was as tame as the female. So we think they 
are natural pets. Now, I come to what I started in to 
ask without this long preamble: I will give description 
as to color, etc., asking you or some of your correspond- 
ents to give the variety to which they belong: In color 
the male is brick or blood red on top of head, shading 
lighter down the neck and breast to legs; also some red 
at base of tail ; wings and tail brown, with white edgings 
on secondaries of wings, flights nearly or quite solid 
brown. Female is a soft shade of color, much like a 
mahese cat. Has a slight tinge of bronze on head, and 
on cushion at base of tail. They have the short, strong 
beak for shucking seeds. For food they are fond of 
apples and most all seeds, particularly so of sunflower 
seeds. They are about the size of robin redbreast, per- 
haps a bit smaller. The male has a low whistle, which 
he keeps going most of the time. When cleaning their 
cage we can hardly keep them off our hands, they are so 
tame. Altogether, they are enj oyable, handsome pets. 
Geo. Davis. 
[The birds are pine grosbeaks {Pinicola enucleator 
canadensis), a northern species of the old and new 
worlds, found in temperate climes only in wmter, easily 
tamed and making most attractive pets. In the winter 
of 1903-4 pine grosbeaks appeared on Long Island, where 
they are very seldom seen, and a number were captured 
with a landing net and kept alive.] 
As bearing on this subject, we reproduce parts of two 
contributions printed more than twenty years ago in the 
Forest and Stream, one from the pen of our old cor- 
respondent. Shadow, and the other from B. Horsford, 
both writers well known for the interest of their ob- 
servations and the charm of their writings, to an older 
generation of Forest and Stream readers. Shadow 
' "Yesterday I saw three of these beautiful birds indus- 
triously picking- up their dinner in a patch of weeds. 
Ihey were quite tame and I drove within twenty feet of 
them, and paused a while to observe and admire them, 
as they are old friends of mine. Four years ago they 
were 'quite plenty in this vicinity, and a large flock of 
them came regularly every morning to feast upon some 
frozen apples that hung on a tree within ten feet of my 
window. They were very tame, and sang so_ sweetly that 
I determined to capture some of them if possible. Fixing 
a slipnoose upon the end of a fishpole I succeeded m 
roping in a pair of them; the male was a young one, and 
the female I judged to be two or three years old. There 
was an old male in the flock, gorgeous with his beautiful 
scarlet plumage, that I tried very hard to capture; but 
he was too wary for me. I got the noose over his head 
several times, but he would twist out of it with scarcely 
an effort, and never move from his perch nor cease his 
cheerful song. He always appeared glad to see me, and 
tc be quite interested in my experiments; he would nod 
and wink at me in the most knowing manner m the 
world, but in spite of my best efforts, he preserved his 
liberty, and after a few days I saw him no more. 
"The pair that I had captured I placed m a large breed- 
ing cao-e that was about three feet square. They did not 
appear to be at all alarmed, but took kindly to their new 
home and at once commenced eating, and in less than an 
hour -they were twittering and singing, happy and con- 
tented. For many weeks they appeared to thoroughly 
enjoy themselves, and became so tame that when I let 
them out in the rooin they would fearlessly alight upon 
my head or shoulder and feed from my hand. I never 
saw such beautiful feathered pets; they kept almost a 
constant song from an early dawn until everyone in the 
house had retired for the nighty Their song was not 
loud, but very sweet and musical." 
Mr. Horsford wrote somewhat later of this species : 
"I well remember the first I ever saw. It was north 
of latitude 45 degrees, in Maine, in the_ winter of '35-6. 
Coming home to dinner one day, in a blizzard such as is 
known only in that climate, 1 could not reach the door 
on account of snow-drifts. I went back to the wood- 
shed, from which flew out five birds I had never before 
seen. One dropped a moment in the snow on the_ roof 
a few feet from me, and then all disappeared, uttering a 
soft, sweet note, ' to avoid separation in the blinding 
^''°T\venty years I looked In vain for that bird, whose 
form, color, and strange habits had been stamped on my 
brain. At length, in mid-winter, in Springfield, Mass., I 
recoo-'nized my birds of the storm. They were feeding on 
seeds of the ash, and I shot a pair with more satisfaction 
than I ever felt under similar circumstances. Six years 
afterward the birds again appeared in Springfield, a flock 
of a dozen or so feeding on the berries of the mountain 
ash, seeds of black ash, and buds of Norway spruce. 
Observing their quiet, unsuspicious habits, I captured 
with noose and fishing rod five, three males. Placing 
them in a large cage, I sat down to make their intimate 
acquaintance. They had evidently come from a region 
where men are not known, and consequently were ig- 
i5orant of human treachery and human invention. It 
mattered little to them that they were in confinement; 
like the little redpoll, they would drop in a clump on the 
bottom of the cage, uttering, while eating, sweetest notes 
of recognition ever uttered by a bird. Then the leader's 
note would be heard, plain as a human voice, 'Come, come, 
let us go,' then, like the redpoll they would all start at 
the same instant in the same direction. Reaching the 
side of the cage, they would cling for a moment to the 
wires, and then fall back to the perches, sitting for a few 
minutes silent and dejected, then running to feed and pick 
about the cage. This was often repeated the first day, 
but soon abandoned entirely. 
"In a few days my birds began to warble a song of 
soft notes, louder and more constant. As spring ad- 
vanced the song resembled somewhat that of the purple 
finch, but with long, sweeping notes which that bird does 
not utter. I used to sit hours by the cage, for I never 
possessed pets I so much loved. They would eat from 
my hand, pick and apple seed from my lips, interspersing 
the same sweet music. 
My birds delighted to wash, a luxury denied them in 
their native region. I filled their bathing vessels with 
snow and water, in which they would wallow until com- 
pletely drenched, eating snow and ice while so doing. 
Sitting by the cage One Sunday afternoon, the sun shining 
brightly, I had placed in it a ball of snow; the birds were 
sitting on the ball, spreading wings and feathers over it 
with every token of delight. Suddenly with a scream 
every bird showed the most intense excitement, not ter- 
ror, but fight all over, heads in one direction depressed, 
wings slightly spread, topknot overhanging the beak, and 
the beak wide open. Turning my head there was a 
shrike hanging to the sash not a foot away. The robber 
bird darted off and my pets became quiet. The shrike 
had discovered the birds from a tree opposite the window, 
and the birds recognized their mortal enemy at sight, 
showing no inclination to retreat. My inference was 
that the shrike dared not encounter the old birds, a 
single nip of whose powerful beak would cut off the neck 
of the shrike in an instant. 
"Wishing another test of their sagacity, I brought to 
the cage some stuffed birds. They approached them fear- 
lessly, recognizing their own kind, but the instant a 
stuffed shrike appeared there was the same scream, the 
same position of desperate resistance repeated. 
"One of my birds, consigned to friends in New York, 
lived six years in a cage, suffering lately from those 
shelly excrescences mentioned by Dr. Coues. My own 
lived about the same number of years, and at last died of 
plethora from over kindness. Of their southern breeding 
limits little is known. Finding them in summer on 
Moosilank, midway in New Hampshire, and having most 
positive evidence that they come down from the spruce 
belt on the Green Mountains to feed on currants and 
cherries in the back settlements of Vermont, I do not 
hesitate to presume that they may be found much further 
south than represented to be the case. One fact at least 
favors this opinion, the bird is almost an annual visitor 
to us, and has already arrived this first of November, the 
snow-bunting having come a few weeks sooner, both pre- 
ceding the cold weather as never before." 
Pearl Fisheries of Ceylon. 
The most famous and best known pearl fisheries of the 
world are those of Ceylon, and from the earliest times 
pearls in great numbers and of great value have been 
taken from its waters. The divers descend to a depth of 
six or eight fathoms, forty or fifty times a day, aided in 
sinking by a stone fastened to a rope long enough _ to 
reach the bottom and carrying a basket or bag in which 
the pearl oysters are placed as collected. The greatest 
depth to which these divers descend is about thirteen 
fathoms. 
The Ceylon pearl fisheries are now under the control of 
the British Government. A remarkable feature about 
them has always been their uncertainty and intermittent 
character. For fifty years, during the nineteenth cen- 
tury, the banks produced nothing, and from 1837 to 1854, 
and again from 1864 to 1873, no pearls were collected. 
In view of the immense importance and value of these 
fisheries, an effort was recently made by the_ Colonial 
officers of the British Government to investigate the 
causes of these barren years, and also to find a remedy 
for them; and Prof. W. A. Herdman was asked to ex- 
amine the records on this subject and to report on them. 
P'ollowing his report came a request by the government 
that he should make a personal investigation of the pearl 
banks, and with Mr. Hornell, an assistant, he went to 
Ceylon and set about the work. 
The first step in the investigation was to make a com- 
plete survey of the whole sea bottom of the area of the 
pearl fisheries. This was done partly by sounding and 
dredging, and partly by the aid of divers, Mr._ Hornell 
himself doing some investigating in a diving suit. Thus 
was gained much information as to the nature of the 
ground best suited to the growth of the pearl oyster and 
of the dangers to which the animal is exposed. It has 
many active enemies, such as sponges and molluscs and 
star fishes, which bore through the shell; fishes and in- 
ternal parasites. Yet, on the whole, the destruction caused 
by these agents is slight, compared with that caused by 
shifting sands, which overwhelm whole beds of oysters, 
burying and killing them. A bed of oysters, examined in 
March, which extended over an area of sixteen square 
miles, was covered by a vast multitude of young oysters 
"so closely packed that the bank must have held not less 
than one hundred thousand million." In November of 
the same year the spot was revisited and the oysters had 
disappeared, having been buried in the sand or swept 
down a steep slope outside the bed. 
Overcrowding is another fruitful cause of destruction 
which Prof. Herdman suggests may be avoided by trans- 
planting. That the star fishes cause much damage is 
shown by an example given of a crop of oysters estimated 
in March, 1902, as five and three-quarter millions, which 
had nearly disappeared by March, 1903, from this cause. 
Along with the study ot the oyster and the oyster beds, 
were carried on investigations in a number of collateral 
subjects. Much light is thrown on the formation of 
pearls, and the investigators foimd that only in very rare 
cases is the nucleus of the pearl a grain of sand. Boring 
sponges and burrowing worms lead to the formation of 
pearls or pearly excrescences on the inside of the shell by 
the irritation which they cause. The largest and best 
pearls are those which occur in the mantle "or in the 
thick white lateral part of the stomach and liver, or 
even secondarily free in a cavity of the body." These 
are caused by the secretion of concentric layers of nacre 
about the dead body of a parasite, and such pearls attain 
their greatest size in oysters from three and a half to 
five years of age. 
The work of this commission will be continued and 
Mr. Hornell will continue his observations as marine 
biologist at the Galle Laboratory, where he will undoubt- 
edly_ do much for the pearl, sponge, trepang and other 
marine fisheries of Ceylon. 
Accompanying this report are many descriptions of 
new forms of life, and it has a great scientific as well as 
commercial value. 
Michigfan Ornithological CItib. 
The second annual meeting of the Michigan Orni- 
thological Club was held at Ann Arbor, Mich., April 2, 
/in connection with the Michigan Academy of Science. 
In the absence of Pres. A. B. Covert, Mr. T. J. Butler 
presided. The business meeting of the club was held 
during the morning session. The election of officers re- 
sulted as follows : President, Prof. Walter B. Barrows, 
Agricultural College; First Vice-President, A. H. Grif- 
fith of the Museum of Art> Detroit; Secretary, Bradshaw 
PI. Swales, Detroit; Treasurer and Business Manager, 
Chas. E. Wisner, Detroit; Editor-in-Chief of Bulletin, 
Alex. W. Blain, Jr., Detroit; Associates, Prof. W. B. 
Barrows, Lansing; J. Claire Wood, Detroit. 
A large attendance was present at the afternoon ses- 
sion, held in the lecture room of the University of Mich- 
igan Museum. Mr. Wilfred Brotherton read a paper, 
"Random Notes on the Bald Eagle in Oakland County, 
Michigan," in which his experience with the bird were 
set forth. Mr. Norman A. Wood gave a very interesting 
paper entitled, "Notes on the Avi-Fauna of Oscoda 
County, Michigan." A complete list of the species ob- 
served during a trip down the An Sable River in the 
summer of 1903 was given with interesting notes. It 
was in this region that the first nests, eggs" and young of 
Kirtland's warbler were discovered by Air. Wood in July 
of the same year. 
Dr. Van Fossen, of Ypsilanti, presented a paper on the 
"Winter Birds Observed Around Ypsilanti." A list of 
the species found was given with full notes. 
Mr. Charles C. Adams, curator of the University Mu- 
seum, spoke on the "Geographical Distribution of Kirt- 
land's Warbler," and illustrated by the use of maps the 
migration route of this species, as known by the cap- 
tured specimens. 
Mr. Alex. W. Blain, Jr., spoke on "The Future for 
Ornithological Work in Michigan," followed by remarks 
by Prof. H. L. Clark of Olivet College. Mr. Clark stated 
that extensive field work is especially needed to map out 
and understand the distribution of the birds of the State. 
Mr. T. J. Butler spoke at length on the formation of a 
chapter of the Audubon Society in Michigan, and of its 
needs and aims. Mr. Butler is the secretary of the 
Michigan chapter and can be addressed at Detroit, Home 
Savings Bank Building. 
Papers entitled "Bird Immigration," by J. Claire 
Wood ; "Nesting of the Barred Owl in IMichigan," by E. 
Arnold, and "The Birds of Michigan," by Prof. Barrows, 
were read. Considerable interest was shown in the meet- 
ing, and the club enters on its second year under favor- 
able aspects. Over one hundred members are enrolled. 
All bird students and bird lovers of the Great Lake 
region are requested to write to the secretary, at 46 
West Earned street, Detroit. 
Bradshaw 11. Swales, Sec'y. 
Detroit, April 15. 
What Bird is This? 
At this season of the year — that is to say, early spring 
— as one strolls through the country, his ear is apt to be 
saluted with the cry of a bird which is almost like the 
sound of a clappers in a cornfield. It will begin clap, 
clap, clap, or clack, clack, clack (and this is a closer rep- 
resentation of it), and keep up uninterruptedly for a 
minute or so and then cease. Though very different 
from the cry of the cuckoo (being, in fact, quite devoid 
of music, withal possessing a fine resonant note of 
spring), it is analogous to it in this, that it nearly always 
seems to come from a distance and has, for that reason, 
a certain air of mystery about it. A dozen times have I 
gone in search of th* utterer of the cry, only to find when 
I got to the place wherever it seemed to have proceeded, 
that it was being uttered far off in a different direction. 
Once, however, I was fortunate enough to get a view of 
the mysterious migrant. It was only a brief one, but suf- 
fi.cient to show me a rather large bird, about twice the 
size of a thrush, and of gray plumage in general. Will 
Forest and Stream kindly identify it for me? 
F. M. 
New York, April. 
Breeding: Turtles and Tortoises. 
United States Consul Canada writes from Vera Cruz, 
IMexico: A laguna known as the Paso de Colombia, and 
situated on the northerly end of the island of Cozumel, 
oft the east coast of Yucatan, has recently been rented 
from the Mexican Government by one^ Sei'ior Valerio 
Rivero with the intention of utilizing Phe waters as a 
breeding place for the common turtle, as well as for the 
tortoise variety. The lessee pays to the customs au- 
thorities at Chetumel the sum of $ioo annually for the 
privilege, the lease to run for ten years. _ 
