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Updated: June 26, 2025
Occasionally one makes the passage to Great Britain by following the ships, and finding them at convenient distances along the route; and I have been told that over fifty different species of our more common birds, such as robins, starlings, grosbeaks, thrushes, etc., have been found in Ireland, having, of course, crossed in this way.
"Hurrah for the grosbeaks," said Henderson. "I did mean to chaff Power about it, but I won't, for it really is very kind of him." "Yes, and so it is of Percival to let us sit here; but I wish that dear old Dubbs could be doing trial-work here with us." "He's very ill," said Henderson, looking serious; "very ill, I'm afraid. I saw him to-day for a minute, but he seemed too weak to talk."
He thought, that, if waked up from a trance, in this swamp, he could tell by the plants what time of the year it was within two days. The redstart was flying about, and presently the fine grosbeaks, whose brilliant scarlet makes the rash gazer wipe his eye, and whose fine clear note Thoreau compared to that of a tanager which has got rid of its hoarseness.
The Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, which Audubon places so high on his list of minstrels, comes annually to one region in this vicinity, but I am not sure of having heard it. The young Pine Grosbeaks come to our woods in winter, and have then but a subdued twitter.
Long ere the first bluebird has whistled to us from the old fence rail that, if we please, spring is coming, the grosbeaks are whistling of spring, and singing their love songs in the forests of Labrador. A curious thing about the flocks we see in winter is that they are composed almost entirely of females. The male bird is very rare with us.
I left the whole company seated idly in a maple-tree, where, to all appearance, they proposed to observe the remainder of the day as a Sabbath. Last winter the grosbeaks were uncommonly abundant. I found a number of them within a few rods of the place just mentioned; this time in evergreen trees, and so near the road that I had no call to commit trespass.
The lady grosbeaks certainly have very little to say to one another, though when mating in their secluded haunts they probably express their preferences decidedly. If they have an ear for music, they must enjoy their wooing immensely, for there is scarcely a lovelier song than that of the male grosbeak.
One morning Henderson came in chuckling and laughing to himself. "So Power's taking a leaf out of your book, Walter. I declare he's becoming a regular sociable grosbeak." "Sociable grosbeak? what do you mean?" "O, don't you know that I'm writing a drama called the `Sociable Grosbeaks, in which you and Ken and I are introduced?
Hour after hour I have seen the mother of a brood of blue grosbeaks pass from the nearest meadow to the tree that held her nest, with a cricket or grasshopper in her bill, while her better-dressed half was singing serenely on a distant tree or pursuing his pleasure amid the branches.
On the third morning after their arrival at the Val, they set off, accompanied by the Hottentots, to the plain which they had spoken of; riding through magnificent groups of acacia or camelthorn trees, many of which were covered with the enormous nests of the social grosbeaks.
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