EASTERN EVENING GROSBEAK 211 



breast almost touching the ground and wings drooped but spread wide and 

 vibrating, he slowly pivots back and forth. He does not sing while dancing. If 

 he utters any sound at all, it is too low for me to hear. 



On June 1 she witnessed two matings. The second "was a very 

 elaborate ceremony * * *. The pair, on the road in front of our 

 house, faced each other. The male danced (but all his movements 

 were more subdued than in the usual dance). The female quivered 

 her wings (short, rapid movements with wings held close to her body) 

 and held her tail high. Then still in this posture but with her breast 

 thrust forward she hopped the few inches to the dancing male. I 

 could not be certain that their breasts touched. She continued to 

 dance. It looked as if they touched bills twice. He then mounted 

 her." 



Nesting. — For 75 years after the discovery of the eastern evening 

 grosbeak, its breeding range remained virtually unknown. Of its 

 nesting habits nothing was reported until L. Osborne Scott sent some 

 notes to W. T. Macoun (1899) in which he announced: "I have seen 

 the Evening Grosbeaks in flocks of ten to eighty on the Peace River. 

 The Indians say they always build in Saskatoon willows (Amelan- 

 chier), though I think there are exceptions." Macoun also published 

 Scott's account of nests he found near Winnipeg that year. "On 

 the 18th of June I saw four nests of the Evening Grosbeak about one 

 mile north of Winnipeg, near the Red River, in fact right on its bank. 

 The nests were about twelve or fifteen feet from the ground in some 

 grey willows; they were rather flat and slight, made of sticks and 

 roots and lined with smaller roots. There were only two eggs in two 

 nests and one each in the other two. The eggs were more blotched 

 than those of the Red-breasted and not so spotted, and I fancy they 

 are a little smaller." 



Ten years later came a report from Sidney S. S. Stansell (1909) 

 that he had located a nest 30 miles northwest of Edmonton, Alberta 

 in June 1908 "which contained a dead full-fledged young male. The 

 nest was 40 feet up in a white birch tree." Dr. S. C. Kendeigh, who 

 found a pair building in a white birch in the Thunder Bay District 

 of Ontario in 1945 writes: 



"I found the evening grosbeak quite common in Algonquin Park 

 and only a little less so north of Port Arthur. On June 22 I found a 

 pair nest-building on one of my plots. Only the base of the nest 

 was in position in a vertical crotch 55 feet up in a white birch that 

 was 60 feet tall. I watched them only five minutes to avoid disturbing 

 them, but in this time the female made 5 visits to the nest with dead 

 twigs. These twigs she broke off a smaller white spruce about two- 

 thirds of the way up. She broke them off with her bill, once dropping 

 two before taking the third to the nest. At the nest she jumped into 



646-737— 68— pt. 1 16 



