The Cedar Bird is noted for its graceful figure, the beauty of its plumage, and for the tuft or crown which adorns the head, and which it can elevate or depress at pleasure. The feathers are of the texture of fine silk or down, glossy and beautiful. It has long been confounded by foreigners with the European Chatterer, but is much smaller than that bird, possesses marked differences of plumage, and specific differences of nature. Its usual note is but a feeble lisp, generally uttered while rising or alighting. When flying they move in parties of fifty or sixty, crowded closely together, and on reaching a tree alight in the same compact manner. Of course the sportsman is enabled to do terrible execution, sometimes destroying half a flock at a single discharge. Their great enemy is the farmer; and when we take into consideration how perseveringly they endeavor to harvest his cherry orchards, even to the last gleaning, in spite, too, of guns and scare-crows, it must be acknowledged that he has better cause for war against them than in many instances of supposed feathered aggressions. The Cedar Bird, however, increases rapidly; and a singular circumstance connected with its habits is the unusually late time at which it begins to build. This is supposed to be owing to a scarcity of food in the spring. The nest is not begun before the second week in June. It is located on a cedar tree, or in some orchard, usually in a forked branch ten or twelve feet from the ground. The bottom is composed of coarse dry stalks of grass, and the whole is lined with very fine threads or blades of the same material. The eggs are three or four in number, white, with a bluish cast, very sharp at the point, and blunt at the other end, the whole surface marked with small round black spots. After being hatched the young are fed for a while on insects, and afterward on berries. If the nest be attacked the parent birds utter no cry, but will sometimes make a show of defence by snapping the bill, elevating the crest, and attack with mimick fury the object which disturbs them.
Near to my old grandfather’s cot, A small stream murmurs by; And from its bank a spring pours out, Whose waters never dry; Beside that spring a willow stands— A tall and stately tree— Oh, would you learn what charms it hath? I’ll tell its charms to me; The willow by the spring, The willow by the spring; Oh, may it live and strength receive, While Time the moments wing.