246 
Brewster on the Pine Grosbeak. 
TAuk 
Ljuly 
snow beneath the tree a light brownish tinge. The snow cling- 
ing to the twigs and branches was also quickly dislodged by the 
movements of the active, heavy birds and for the first few minutes 
it was incessantly flashing out in puffs like steam from a dozen 
different points at once. The finer particles, sifting slowly down, 
filled the still air and enveloped the entire tree in a veil-like mist 
of incredible delicacy and beauty, tinted, where the sunbeams 
pierced it, with rose, salmon, and orange, elsewhere of a soft 
dead white, — truly a fitting drapery for this winter picture, — 
the hardy Grosbeaks at their morning meal. They worked in 
silence when undisturbed and so very busily that at the end of 
the first hour they had actually eaten or shaken off nearly half 
the entire crop of seeds. Some men at work near by afterwards 
told me that this tree was wholly denuded of fruit by three o’clock 
that afternoon when the birds descended to the ground and 
attacked the fallen seeds, finishing them before sunset. 
The next day (January n) the city was fairly in possession 
of the Grosbeaks. The sound of their piping was constantly in 
my ears whenever I stepped out of doors, and I rarely looked out 
of the window for a moment without seeing a flock sweeping past 
in long, undulating curves. Mr. Hoffmann writes under this date : 
“ In the afternoon there was a flock of over sixty- five birds in the 
college yard, feeding in the snow under the ash trees. The birds 
on the plank walks hardly moved to let the men pass, and one 
actually lit on my hat as I stood beneath the large ash tree. 
Numbers were feeding outside the yard between the car-tracks, 
and on the sidewalks. Many people were watching them.” 
Fully a mile from the college, but very near the trees which the 
birds had stripped on the previous day, stand two large ash trees 
in which, shortly after eight o’clock, I found over two hundred 
Grosbeaks feeding. Both trees were thickly hung with seeds at 
this hour, but the birds had thinned the clusters on the upper 
branches and were fast working downward. At half-past three 
that afternoon, when I visited the place again with Mr. Faxon, not 
a seed remained on either tree. The snow beneath was com- 
pletely covered with fallen seeds as with a light brown carpet, 
and the Grosbeaks were all there eating them. By dividing the 
flocks into halves and counting quickly, we got a very close 
