226 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part i 



be handled with heavy gloves, for they can bite savagely with their 

 powerful beaks." 



G. Hapgood Parks (1946) writes of his Hartford station: 



Why the flock returned morning after morning before sunrise, its population 

 swelling until more than two hundred individuals simultaneously crowded every 

 feeder and every shelf and filled every trap, is at least partly explained by the 

 bushels of sunflower seed shucks which carpet our partly unspaded victory garden 

 this spring. Only sHghtly less appealing to the birds seemed to be the large 

 wooden bowl which we kept always filled with warm water. * * * As much as 

 a gallon of water was drunk on mid-winter days when the Grosbeak traffic was 

 at its height. Not one of the birds, however, was ever observed in an attempt to 

 bathe in the bowl. 



Later, Parks wrote to Mr. Bent: "We observed our first evening 

 grosbeak in the act of bathing on January 15, 1947. It was a rainy 

 day and 12 of the birds bathed briefly in puddles of water which had 

 formed in depressions in the ice of our driveway. Three others 

 bathed in the bu'd bath on sunny, mild January 18. A half-dozen 

 isolated instances of bathing were observed during the following 

 weeks." 



Forbush (1929) says: "They are fond of bathing even in winter, and 

 visit unfrozen parts of swift streams at this season to bathe and 

 di-ink * * * ." 



Mrs. A. O. Pendleton (B. R. Chamberlain, 1952), writing from 

 North Carohna, tells of a remarkable invasion of evening grosbeaks 

 on January 26, 1952, into her garden and her bird bath. She writes: 

 "we heard a great chattering of birds * * *. There must have been 

 500 of them. Surely they must have just come in from a very long 

 flight because the bird bath was full of them standing as close to each 

 other as baby chicks, all drinking and bathing at once. Hovering 

 above the bath like hummingbu'ds, there were dozens of them awaiting 

 a vacant spot to alight in the water * * *." 



Mrs. Lucie McDougall, of Port Credit, Ontario, reported to me 

 that in late April, 1958, the grosbeaks sunbathed daily at her feeding 

 station. She saw as many as four males sunbathing at once on 

 her window-sill, a remarkable sight. Sunbathing grosbeaks as- 

 sume most unusual postures. I watched one male sprawled on the 

 ground looking, it seemed, right into the sun. Its 12 tail feathers 

 were fanned out so the sun could reach each of them; its bill was 

 open, its crown feathers erect. Another male cocked his head side- 

 ways, eyed the sun, and seemed bent on having its rays penetrate 

 the skin beneath the gray down under its breast feathers. 



The evening grosbeak has the undulating flight so characteristic 

 of the finch family. It does not, however, dip in such deep loops as 

 does the pine grosbeak, nor does the flight pattern foUow the bouncing 

 bends of the goldfinch. The undulations are definite but not deep. 



