MIGRATION . 
121 
search of food. The flickers feed much of the 
time upon the ground among the berry-bushes, 
casting aside woodpecker habits and seeming 
more like starlings. The robins are sometimes 
with them upon the ground, but oftener in the 
wild cherry-trees with the cedar-birds, stripping 
bough after bough of its dark fruit. When the 
flock moves, the cedar-birds mass themselves 
and fly for a while as though linked together. 
Then, without apparent cause, part or the whole 
turn about and fly first this way, then that, per¬ 
haps coming back, after a few minutes, to the 
point of departure. When a flock of red cross¬ 
bills do this, they sprinkle the air and the earth 
with sweet notes; but the cedar-birds have no 
joy in their one chilly whistle, and there is more 
of aimless, witless indecision in their flights 
than there is of romping. Whenever I come 
near one of their flocks, I scan them carefully, 
hoping to detect the white wing-bars of a Bo¬ 
hemian waxwing among them, yet it is more 
than likely that I may watch a lifetime without 
having the fortune to see in the flesh one of 
those rare vagabonds of the north. The roving 
habits of these birds and of the crossbills con¬ 
trast strangely with the simple steadfastness of 
the grouse, and the clock-like punctuality of 
many of the migrants. Something in that cold 
past with its glaciers and ice-crushed continents 
