ji 
OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE WISCONSIN AUDUBON SOCIETY: 
One Year 50 Cents 
_ 
Published by the Wisconsin Audubon Society at Ftfadison, Wisconsin 
Entered as second class matter August 23, 1909, at Madison, Wis., under the act of Congress of March 3, 1879 
Single Copy 5 Cents 
VOL. XV FEBRUARY, 1914 No. 6 
WINTERING IN HOOD RIVER, OREGON 
(Some Further Notes) 
Rebecca H. Kauffman 
One fine morning, after the myster- 
ions Chinook had come up the canyon 
of the Columbia and the snow had 
j quite disappeared in the Lower Val¬ 
iev under its warm touch, an errand 
* 
took me up Oak street. Suddenly al¬ 
most directly in front of me a large 
hock of birds, possibly two hundred, 
alighted among the bare branches of a 
big tree (the Oregon oak), that stood 
by the edge of the sidewalk. I recog¬ 
nized them at once. They were even¬ 
ing grosbeaks. Later in the day, a 
bird lover whose home is near this oak 
tree, told me he had seen these birds 
for several weeks. The next morning 
a sharp wind was blowing, but in spite 
of this, a friend from Minneapolis ac¬ 
companied me to look for them. No 
grosbeaks to be seen or heard any- 
. where on Oak street, though the maple 
1 
trees still hung thick with heavy pods 
of seed. We followed the sidewalk to 
the head of the avenue, where it ended 
in a small tract of land set with cherry 
trees. Delicious cherries (pink-cheeked 
Royal Anns) these trees had borne the 
last June, as we two, mit unseren Ilcr- 
* ren, could attest, as the tract had been 
for sale and a “real estate man” had 
f< 
taken us all up to look it over and to 
see the snow-crowned Mt. Adams 
across the Columbia river on the 
Washington, side, forty miles away! 
On this tract we espied the evening 
grosbeaks, their black and golden 
coats glowing in the bright morning 
sunshine, as they flitted from tree to 
tree and dropped down to the ground 
in their eagerness to appease their ap¬ 
petites with the unpicked cherries na¬ 
ture had evaporated for their use, 
keeping up all the while as they ate a 
friendly chatter and murmur of de¬ 
light. 
Later in the morning, we saw other 
groups of evening grosbeaks up on 
“The Heights,” some of them sitting 
on the steps leading down to the part 
of the city on the river level, and all 
so tame, as were those among the cher¬ 
ries, allowing us to be near them with 
scarcely a sign of fear. 
Mr. William Rogers Lord, in “The 
Birds of Oregon and Washington,” 
says, “The explanation of the fearless¬ 
ness of these birds is found in the fact 
that they are not familiar enough 
with the bird-stoning and killing pro¬ 
pensities of human beings to keep at a 
