252 
Brewster on the Pine Grosbeak. 
TAuk 
L July 
spondent (M. Hardy), however, is sure that in Maine they ate the 
pulp only incidentally in their efforts to get the seeds. 
With regard to the order of preference which the Grosbeaks 
followed when more than one kind 'of suitable food was within 
reach, it may be mentioned that eighteen specimens examined at 
Andover, Mass., between Nov. 30 and Mar. 11, show that up to 
the second week in January the birds ate ash-seeds almost exclu- 
sively. Between that time and the beginning of March, they fed 
chiefly on rotten apples, and during March mainly on maple buds. 
A report from Arlington gives ash-seeds as their principal food 
.till January 15, rotten apples during February, and maple buds 
in March. 
1 hat the movements of the Grosbeaks were governed by the 
abundance or absence of food was clearly shown by the behavior 
of a flock of about thirty-six birds which appeared at West Med- 
ford about the 1st of December and soon stripped an English 
hawthorn of its fruit. The owner of the place then put out hemp 
seed to which the birds came regularly, collecting in the neigh- 
boring pastures, and flying in a body to the feeding ground. The 
hemp was placed on the top of a kennel surrounded by twenty 
dogs, whose noise, however, did not seem to disturb the Grosbeaks 
in the least. They fed four times a day — at morning, noon, four 
p. M., and sundown. One day when the hemp had not been put out 
for them, the birds ate all the seeds of a Roxbury waxwork vine 
( Celastrus scandens ). By February 16, their number had dimin- 
ished to eighteen, but these came regularly, and grew exceed- 
ingly tame. On March 12, the date of the last report, they had 
increased again to twenty-eight. 
With regard to the relative number of bright males to dull 
plumaged birds, the evidence shows very clearly that as the flight 
pressed southwards the number of bright males steadily dimin- 
ished until at Woods Hole, the southernmost station for Massa- 
chusetts, flocks of a hundred members each often did not contain 
a single red bird. This change in the normal ratio seems to have 
been due chiefly if not wholly to the fact (attested by many differ- 
ent observers) that as the flocks passed slowly through the more 
thickly settled districts the conspicuous and attractive red birds 
were nearly all picked off by country gunners and taxidermists. 
