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



noticed before. After some introductory passages, he gave a high 

 note that seemed to come from his nostrils, whizz-whizz-tee-ee. He 

 seemed to Uke this new phrase in his musical repertoire and repeated 

 it a number of times. The tee-ee is very high, yet it carries well. 

 From then on we detected this song often dming his periods of singing. 

 J. Murray Speirs (1950) writes of a March flock in Ontario: "* * * if 

 I listen hard I can make out their very high pitched, rather starling- 

 like squeaky song, Svnsvn-tsiee." 



H. R. Ivor (MS.) writes of a 3-month old male raised in his bird 

 observatory: "Today I heard him singing — the first time I have 

 ever heard an evening grosbeak sing. The song was very low and 

 some of the notes seemed quite sweet, but were intermixed with 

 some of the harsher evening grosbeak notes. I felt that there was 

 some resemblance between his sweeter notes and those of the autumn 

 song of the young rose-breast." The next year, Ivor heard the same 

 bird singing a song like a catbird's also some notes similar to a blue- 

 bird's, as well as to the high-pitched notes of the mating song of the 

 rose-breasted grosbeak. 



The warning note of the species, given more often by a female, is 

 quoit] the scold note is dzee; the male's invitation to nest, bzzt] the 

 nestling's food-call, see-see-see; the fledgling's food call, bee? bee, bee? 

 bee, etc.; and the parent's call to the fledgling that has left the nest 

 is chu-hee-chu, chu-hee-chu. 



Field marks. — The evening grosbeak is a heavily-built yellow, black, 

 and white finch between the size of a house sparrow and a robin with 

 a very large, light-colored beak. The adult male has a brown head 

 and neck, a black crown and a band of bright yellowish-green over 

 the eyes. The body is mainly yellow and the tail is short, forked, 

 and black. The wings of males of all ages are black, each with a 

 conspicuous large white wing patch. Young males have a golden 

 crown. The body of the female is gray, suffused with yellowish 

 green about the nape; wings and tail are black with white markings. 



The flight is undulating, and the black and white wings are conspic- 

 uous in flight. When newly arrived in a locality, they are sometimes 

 described as "wild canaries," "little parrots," or "oversized gold- 

 finches." Reports of orioles seen in the north in winter usually 

 turn out to be this species. 



Enemies. — Evening grosbeaks are comparatively fearless in the pres- 

 ence of man and have proved to be attractive and easy targets. The 

 first evening grosbeak known to science wp^s the specimen an Indian 

 boy shot near Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan Territory, in 1823 (William 

 Cooper, 1825). When they appeared for the first time in the east 

 during the great invasion of 1889-90, D. G. Cox (1891-92) wrote 

 from Toronto, Ontario, "numbers of them were killed by boys with 



