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Although the finest mulberry-trees are said to be found along the Mississippi and the lower Ohio Rivers, I have seen large, thrifty trees in Connecticut and on Long Island. They grow from Massachusetts to Florida and west to Nebraska. Birds are very fond of the mulberry. The first rose-breasted grosbeaks I ever saw were in a great mulberry-tree on a farm in the northern part of Connecticut.
That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch, and which unpracticed ears would mistake for the voice of the scarlet tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the rose-breasted grosbeak. It is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, full of health and assurance, indicating fine talents in the performer, but not a genius.
As he began to undo the box I expected to see some of our own rarer birds, perhaps the rose-breasted grosbeak or Bohemian chatterer. Imagine, then, how I was taken aback when I beheld instead a swallow-shaped bird, quite as large as a pigeon, with a forked tail, glossy black above and snow-white beneath.
That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch, and which unpracticed ears would mistake for the voice of the scarlet tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the rose-breasted grosbeak. It is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, full of health and assurance, indicating fine talents in the performer, but not genius.
Nevertheless, if I were selling that "waste," that "hole in the ground," it would not hurt my conscience, such as it is, to declare that the birds on it alone are worth more than it cost: wood-thrushes and robins, golden orioles, scarlet tanagers, blackbirds, bluebirds, oven-birds, cedar-birds, veeries, vireos, song-sparrows, flycatchers, kinglets, the flicker, the cuckoo, the nuthatch, the chickadee and the rose-breasted grosbeak, not to mention jays or kingfishers, swallows, the little green heron or that cock of the walk, the red squirrel.
Toward the end of the month, when the gelatinous masses in the water courses have developed the little black dots sufficiently so that we can see they are tadpoles, when the songsters have been joined by the catbird, the rose-breasted grosbeak, the woodthrush, the whippoorwill, the cheerful and friendly chewink and several of the warblers and flycatchers, the rivers and creeks will be fringed with the brilliant yellow of the marsh marigold, and we shall think of Shakespeare, walking the meadows of Avon, getting material for that song of the musicians in Cymbeline: And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes.
All day long, the little beaks of the birds are busy. The dear little rose-breasted gross-beak carefully examines the potato plants, and picks off the beetles, the martins destroy weevil, the quail and grouse family eats the chinchbug, the woodpeckers dig the worms from the trees, and many other birds eat the flies and gnats and mosquitoes that torment us so.
You must hear a little about that first, and let your American Goldfinch take his turn with his brothers and cousins, for Rap's Rose-breasted Grosbeak belongs also in this family." "You say my bird is called American Goldfinch. He is such a bright yellow that gold is a good name for him, but what does 'Finch' mean?" "Finch, as I said, is the name of the great family to which he belongs.
For the last three days the Cardinal had been watching his cousin, rose-breasted Grosbeak, make violent love to the most exquisite little female, who apparently encouraged his advances, only to see him left sitting as blue and disconsolate as any human lover, when he discovers that the maid who has coquetted with him for a season belongs to another man.
He was black and white on top, but when he went by I saw he had a beautiful spot on the breast like a shield sort of pink red, the color of raspberries, you know." "That was the Rose-breasted Grosbeak," said the Doctor. "Now, we have pockets full of material for bird stories, enough to last a week.
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