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. From its heavy beak, I at once
recognized it as belonging to the family of grosbeaks. A few days
later I saw large numbers of them in the woods, on the ground, and
in the trees. And still later, and on till February, they were very
numerous on the Hudson, coming all about my house,--more familiar
even than the little snowbird, hopping beneath the windows, and
looking up at me apparently with as much curiosity as I looked down
upon them. They fed on the buds of the sugar maples and upon frozen
apples in the orchard. They were mostly young birds and females,
colored very much like the common sparrow, with now and then
visible the dull carmine-colored head and neck of an old male.
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