Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/317

Rh, and had thirty-four rings. Another flourishing one fifteen inches high had twelve rings at ground. Another, three feet high, fresh and vigorous, without a flat top as yet, had its woody part one and an eighth inches in diameter, the bark being one eighth inch thick, and sixty-one rings. There were no signs of decay, though it was, as usual, mossy or covered with lichens.

When half way down the mountain amid the spruce, we saw two pine grossbeaks, male and female, and looked for a nest, but in vain. They were remarkably tame. The male flew near inquisitively, uttering a low twitter, and perched fearlessly within four feet of us, eyeing us and pluming himself, and plucking and eating the leaves of the Amelanchier oligocarpa on which he sat for several minutes. The female, mean time, was a rod off. They were evidently breeding there, yet neither Wilson nor Nuttall speak of their breeding in the United States.

At the base of the mountain over the road heard singing, and saw at the same place where I heard him the evening before, a splendid rose-breasted grossbeak. I had before mistaken him at first for a tanager, then for a red-eye, but was not satisfied. Now with my glass I distinguished him sitting quite still high above the road at the entrance of the mountain path, in the deep