Vol. XII"] 
1895 J 
Brewster on the Pine Grosbeak. 
2 45 
A REMARKABLE FLIGHT OF PINE GROSBEAKS 
(. PINICOLA ENUCLEATOR). 
Auk, XII, July, 1895, 9 ?- 
BY WILLIAM BREWSTER. 
Toward the end of November, 1892, Pine Grosbeaks 
appeared in eastern Massachusetts for the first time in three 
years. My earliest date is November 21, when I heard a bird 
in Concord, Mass. Soon after a flock was met with in Ipswich, 
and by the first week in December the birds had been reported 
in large numbers from Belmont, Wellesley Hills, Fitchburg and 
other towns. 
On the 2 1 st of December, twenty-seven Grosbeaks, the first 
I had seen in Cambridge, visited a red cedar behind our house, 
and spent half an hour feeding on the abundant berries, but 
with the exception of these birds I saw no more in the city 
until the second week in January. Reports kept coming in, 
however, of their appearance in unusual numbers in the sur- 
rounding towns, and of their great increase in number during 
the first weeks in January. Flocks of over a hundred birds 
were seen in Wellesley Hills and in Arlington. 
On January 9 I met with a flock of about forty- five in some 
spruces not far from the centre of the city, and near the same 
place I found, next day, a flock of fully one hundred and 
twenty-five. The owner of the grounds said that the birds 
were first seen there on the morning of the 8th ; that during 
this and the following day they devoted themselves to some 
white ash trees immediately about his house ; and that by the 
afternoon of the 9th they had stripped these trees of their fruit. 
When I first saw them they were assembling in a large white 
ash which overhangs the street. This tree was loaded with fruit, 
and with snow clinging to the fruit-clusters and to every twig. 
In a few minutes it also supported more than a hundred Gros- 
beaks who distributed themselves quite evenly over every part 
from the drooping lower, to the upright upper, branches and 
began shelling out and swallowing the seeds, the rejected wings 
of which, floating down in showers, soon gave the surface of the 
