242 
OMNIVOROUS BIRDS. 
winter they abound in all the forests of the Southern 
States to Florida, and probably extend their visits into 
Mexico. In all these countries, in autumn, families of 
them are seen chattering and roving through the woods, 
busily engaged in gleaning their multifarious food, along 
with the preceding species, Nuthatches, and Creepers, 
the whole forming a busy, active, and noisy group, whose 
manners, food, and habits bring them together in a com- 
mon pursuit. Their diet varies with the season, for be- 
sides insects, their larvae, and eggs, of which they are 
more particularly fond, in the month of September they 
leave the woods and assemble familiarly in our orchards 
and gardens, and even enter the thronging cities in quest 
of that support which their native forests now deny them. 
Large seeds of many kinds, particularly those which are 
oily, as the Sun-flower, and Pine and Spruce Kernels 
are now sought after. These seeds, in the usual manner 
of the genus, are seized in the claws and held against the 
branch, until picked open by the bill to obtain their con- 
tents. Fat of various kinds is also greedily eaten, and 
they regularly watch the retreat of the hog-killers, in the 
country, to glean up the fragments of meat which adhere 
to the places where the carcases have been suspended. At 
times they feed upon the wax of the Candle-berry Myrtle 
( Myrica cerifera ) ; they likewise pick up crumbs near 
the houses, and search the weather-boards, and even the 
window-sills, familiarly for their lurking prey, and are 
particularly fond of spiders and the eggs of destructive 
moths, especially those of the canker-worm, which they 
greedily destroy in all its stages of existence. It is said 
that they sometimes attack their own species when the in- 
dividual is sickly, and aim their blows at the skull with a 
view to eat the brain ; but this barbarity I have never wit- 
nessed. In winter, when satisfied, they will descend to 
