Page:Birdcraft-1897.djvu/210

Rh

Length: 9.10 inches.

Male: Heavy bill, giving it almost the appearance of a Parrot. Above general colour stratberry-red, with some gray fleckings, deepest on head and rump. Wings and tail brown; some feathers edged with lighter brown and some with white. Below paler red, turning to grayish green on belly. Bill and feet blackish.

Female: Ash-brown, with yellowish bronze wash on rump, head, and breast.

Song: " A subdued, rattling warble broken by whistling notes."

Season: A winter visitor whose appearance is as irregular as the length of its stay.

Breeds: Far north in evergreen woods; also casually in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, but mainly north of the United States.

Nest: Saddled on a branch or in a crotch. Twigs, roots, and fibres below, with a soft upper section.

Eggs: 4, a greenish blue ground with dark brown spots.

This finely coloured Grosbeak comes to us only in win-ter, and can be easily identified at a season when such brilliant birds are rare. It is a resident of northern New England, and, however much it may wander about in the more southern states, it can only be regarded as an irregular and capricious migrant.

The song of this species is said to be very attractive, but is of course seldom heard so far away from the breeding-haunts. Mr. Bicknell calls it a subdued, rattling warble, which is sometimes heard as early as February and March, and Dr. Coues calls the birds fine musicians. They come in pairs or in flocks, and as the young males do not attain their strawberry-coloured feathers until the second year, and the females are a brownish yellow, the proportion of red birds in these flocks is quite small.

Severely cold winters and strong gales seem to blow them down to us; a number appeared here in the snowy season of 1892-93, while in the open winter of 1893-94 I did not