The Pine Siskin, as its name implies, is a lover of ever-greens, and spends the winter in roving from copse to copse. It is strictly a seed-eater, and consumes alike the kernels of large cones and the seeds of low herbs. It has the dipping flight of the Goldfinch, and many other characteristics of the two birds are similar. You will be most likely to iden-Eky the Pine Siskin as it clings to tufts of spruce cones, peering between their scales; the sulphur-yellow tinge of the feathers showing plainly against the deep green.
Dr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr., who heard these Siskins singing between March 15, and May 2, at Rockaway and Cypress Hills Cemetery, says that their song is a "soliloquizing gabble, interspersed with a prolonged wheeze— a prolongation of their usual note while flying." Mr. Bicknell adds: "This hoarse note sometimes sounds like a common note of the English House Sparrow. Before it was familiar to me, it was with no little surprise that I heard at Big Moose Lake, deep in the Adirondack wilderness, a bird note so suggestive of city streets."
Snowflake: Plectrophanes nivalis.
Snow Bunting.
Plate 28. Fig. 1.
Length: 7 inches.
142
