EASTERN EVENING GROSBEAK 237 



New York — Elmira, August 20; Cayuga and Oneida Lake basins, 

 September 25 (median of 13 years, October 15). New Jersey — West 

 Milford, October 10. Pennsylvania — Holicong, August 24 ; New Hope, 

 August 28. Maryland — Ocean City, October 8; Laurel, October 10 

 (median of 7 years, October 23). District of Columbia — October 4. 

 West Virginia — Charleston, September 20; Meadville, October 5. 

 Virginia — Deerfield, September 20; Shenandoah National Park, 

 September 22. North Carolina — Wentworth, October 29. South 

 Carolina — Charleston, November 18. Alabama — Birmingham and 

 Monte Sano, November 21. 



Egg dates. — Manitoba: 6 records, June 18 to June 20; 1 record, 

 June 18. 



Michigan: 1 record, June 24. 



Ontario: 3 records, June 13 to June 20. 



HESPERIPHONA VESPERTINA BROOKSI GrinneU 



Western Evening Grosbeak 



PLATE 14 



Contributed by Doris IIuestis Speirs 



Habits 



The western evening grosbeak is largely a bird of the higher 

 altitudes whose plumage is a blending, a chiaroscuro, of the high- 

 hghts and shadows of the great hills. Enid Michael (1926) writes 

 from Yo Semite: 



The Evening Grosbeak * * * furnishes a splendid example of protective col- 

 oring in birds. It is brilliantly colored white, yellow, black and olive. It would 

 seem to be one of the most conspicuous of high Sierran birds. Yet its brightest 

 color is almost identical with the lemon color of the lichens found throughout 

 our high Sierra. Any bird lover seeing the Evening Grosbeak for the first time 

 is sure to be thrilled. In later summer it comes occasionally down to the floor 

 of Yosemite valley, but it is seen more frequently in the high Sierra in that yet 

 little known part of Yosemite National Park lying back of the valley proper. 



Florence Merriam Bailey (1902) observes: "While watching the 

 birds on Mt. Shasta one day, I was struck by the conspicuousness of 

 one that flew across an open space. As it lit on a dead stub whose 

 silvery branches were touched with yellow lichen, to my amazement 

 it simply vanished. Its peculiar greenish yellow toned in perfectly 

 with the greenish yellow of the lichen, * * * the lichen being a 

 strildng feature of the forests of the Sierra Nevada, Cascades, and 

 northern Rockies, so that the unusual coloration of the bird may be 

 of marked significance." 



That the bird is no newcomer to the West Coast was proved when 

 a diagnostic lower mandible was identified among the fossils from the 



