Indeed, the food question seems to be the only serious one with the birds.  Give them plenty to eat, and no doubt the majority of them would face our winters.  I believe all the woodpeckers are winter birds, except the high-hole or yellow-hammer, and he obtains the greater part of his subsistence from the ground, and is not a woodpecker at all in his habits of feeding.  Were it not that it has recourse to budding, the ruffed grouse would be obliged to migrate.  The quail—­a bird, no doubt, equally hardy, but whose food is at the mercy of the snow—­is frequently cut off by our severe winters when it ventures to brave them, which is not often.  Where plenty of the berries of the red cedar can be had, the cedar-bird will pass the winter in New York.  The old ornithologists say the bluebird migrates to Bermuda; but in the winter of 1874-75, severe as it was, a pair of them wintered with me eighty miles north of New York city.  They seem to have been decided in their choice by the attractions of my rustic porch and the fruit of a sugar-berry tree (celtis—­a kind of tree-lotus) that stood in front of it.  They lodged in the porch and took their meals in the tree.  Indeed, they became regular lotus-eaters.  Punctually at dusk they were in their places on a large laurel root in the top of the porch, whence, however, they were frequently routed by an indignant broom that was jealous of the neatness of the porch floor.  But the pair would not take any hints of this kind, and did not give up their quarters in the porch or their lotus berries till spring.

Many times during the winter the sugar-berry tree was visited by a flock of cedar-birds that also wintered in the vicinity.  At such times it was amusing to witness the pretty wrath of the bluebirds, scolding and threatening the intruders, and begrudging them every berry they ate.  The bluebird cannot utter a harsh or unpleasing note.  Indeed, he seems to have but one language, one speech, for both love and war, and the expression of his indignation is nearly as musical as his song.  The male frequently made hostile demonstrations toward the cedar-birds, but did not openly attack them, and, with his mate, appeared to experience great relief when the poachers had gone.

I had other company in my solitude also, among the rest a distinguished arrival from the far north, the pine grosbeak, a bird rarely seen in these parts, except now and then a single specimen.  But in the winter of 1875, heralding the extreme cold weather, and no doubt in consequence of it, there was a large incursion of them into this State and New England.  They attracted the notice of the country people everywhere.  I first saw them early in December about the head of the Delaware.  I was walking along a cleared ridge with my gun, just at sundown, when I beheld two strange birds sitting in a small maple.  On bringing one of them down, I found it was a bird I had never before seen; in color and shape like the purple finch, but quite as large again in size.