2 BIRDS OF AMERICA 



by the use of manure containing weed seed and the planting of impure seed, which often 

 contains seeds of foreign weeds of the worst stamp. Birds take seeds for food and it seems 

 probable that such use would preclude the evacuation of any but a most insignificant propor- 

 tion of uninjured seeds. 



Four vernacular names have been applied to this group : Buntings, Grosbeaks, Sparrows, 

 and Finches. "Bunting " means plump, or dumpy, or rounded out, as a sail is filled with the 

 wind, and its application to this family refers to the stocky little bodies of its members. "Gros- 

 beak" has reference to their short, thick bills, but is not altogether appropriate as there are 

 birds in other families with this characteristic. "Sparrow" literally means " fiutterer " and 

 has come to us from the Anglo-Saxon spearwa, through the mediaeval English sparwe, sparewe, 

 and sparowc. "Finch" is also of Anglo-Saxon origin, but its literal meaning has been lost. 

 Robert Ridgway considers it the most appropriate of the popular names for this family in 

 America; he says (manuscript) that in a strict sense the term "Sparrow" pertains to the 

 species Passer only, represented in America only by the introduced House Sparrow, or so- 

 called English Sparrow, and in this restricted sense we have no native American true 

 Sparrows; on the other hand there are many true Finches in America. 



EVENING GROSBEAK 



Hesperiphona vespertina vespertina ( W . Cooper) 



A. O. U. Ni 



514 See Color Plate 79 



Other Names.— Sugar Bird ; American Hawfinch. 



General Description. — Length, S'i inches. Males, 

 yellowisli and black: female, gray and black. Bill, 

 heavy : legs, short ; tail, short and slightly emarginate ; 

 wings, nearly twice the length of tail and pointed. 



Color. — Adult Male: Forehead and stripe over the 

 eye. yellow: erozs.<n, black: rest of head with neck and 

 upper back, plain olive, lighter and more yellowish olive 

 on throat, changing gradually to clear lemon-yellow on 

 shoulders and rump and to lighter yellow on posterior 

 under parts, the longer under tail-coverts sometimes 

 partly white; upper tail-eoverts. tail, and icings black: 

 inner zcing quills, white or pale grayish ; bill, light olive- 

 yellowish or pale yellowish green ; iris, brown. Adult 

 Female : Above, plain deep smoke-gray, the head 

 darker, the rump paler ; the hindneck tinged with yellow- 

 ish olive-green ; throat, abdomen, and under tail-coverts 

 white: rest of under parts, light bufify-grayish usually 

 tinged with yellow, especially on sides of chest ; wings. 



dull black with iimermost greater coverts largely dull 

 white, inner wing quills largely light gray ; the pri- 

 maries edged with white and pale gray, all except the 

 three outermost quills white at base, forming a distinct 

 patch; unper tail-coverts black with large terminal spots 

 of pale bufify-grayish and white; tail, black with inner 

 webs of feathers broadly white at tips. 



Nest and Eggs. — Nest: Usually placed in the top of 

 a conifer from 15 to 50 feet up; sometimes in other 

 trees; a saucer-shaped affair of small twigs, grass, root- 

 lets, bark strips, lined with fine rootlets or horse- 

 hair. Eggs : 3 or 4. clear green blotched with pale 

 brown. 



Distribution. — Interior districts of North America 

 east of Rocky Mountains; north (in winter) to the 

 -Saskatchewan ; south, in winter, irregularly, to Kansas, 

 Iowa, Illinois. Kentucky, Ohio, etc. ; eastward, irregu- 

 larly and in winter only, to Ontario, New York, and 

 New England. Breeds in western Canada. 



The Hawfinch of England has lived in a popu- 

 lous land and among a people appreciative of the 

 beauty of a beautiful bird. The American rela- 

 tive of the Hawfinch, nesting far out in the less 

 accessible foothills of Alberta and up in the 

 Canadian Rockies, has failed to meet with the 

 poetical disposition and the friendship that be- 

 long to the admirers of the Hawfinch. The 

 Evening Grosbeak is in reality a stranger to 

 civilization except in the newer West, and this 

 newer West is a stranger to him. In the winter 

 there may be seen in the northwestern States 

 scattered flocks of these Grosbeaks strikingly 



marked in their yellow and black. When cer- 

 tain seeds are scarce they will drift on into the 

 eastern States in the middle of winter, reaching 

 New England and the Maritime Provinces. But 

 these years are not often. 



During the early months of igi6 the presence 

 of these birds in the East excited an unusual in- 

 terest. The first record of the Evening Grosbeak 

 in New York city was during the 191 1 migration. 

 The ornithological magazines and daily papers 

 had many letters on the observations made of the 

 1916 migration. Sara Chandler Eastman gave 

 the following interesting and informing record 



