On the Trail of the Evening Grosbeak 



By ARTHUR A. ALLEN, Ithaca, N. Y. 

 With photographs by the Author 



THIS is not a tale of the 'treacherous muskeg' and the 'long traverse.' 

 No perilous adventures or rare discoveries in the nesting haunts of 

 this fascinating bird will be recounted. We will not even penetrate into 

 its breeding range. Instead, follow me along the highways of Ithaca, through 

 its parks and cemeteries and into its thickets. Track with me these birds from 

 feeding-ground to feeding-ground, learn their food, decoy them to feeding-sta- 

 tions, bring them to our own back door, and transform them from fleeting 

 guests to daily companions. 



The story begins February 17, 1914; at least for our purposes it does, 

 though, personally, I believe it began many, many Grosbeak generations ago, 

 when the first of the species wandered from the beaten paths of their migra- 

 tion in the west and started the habit of coming east. For they are creatures 

 of habit, these Evening Grosbeaks, stolid, indifferent, lazy, almost stupid, and, 

 as this story will show, having once discovered a satisfactory course of action 

 Or a good route to travel, they can never perceive another. And so every year, 

 I believe, certain of these birds start on their easterly thoroughfares, traveling 

 by easy stages, delaying where food is plentiful, and only during unusual years 

 of starvation in the west reaching their highways in the east. 



On this day, February 17, a flock of eleven birds was seen by Miss Bates 

 in the trees behind her residence at the south side of the city and promptly 

 reported. Somehow, an Evening Grosbeak always creates a furor among bird- 

 lovers in the East; the news of their arrival was announced in the local papers, 

 and early-morning bird trips were quite in vogue. A strange coincidence and 

 a significant one it seemed, that on their last appearance in Ithaca they were 

 first recorded at this same place, as though it were a way-station along their 

 route of travel. 



The next day they returned, and for several days thereafter were seen 

 between eleven and one o'clock, sometimes staying for half an hour or more 

 in the group of chokecherry trees back of the house. It was noticed that 

 they were feeding on the seeds of the dried cherries which still clung to the 

 branches, cracking them with their heavy bills; and it was then that the 

 thought of finding a suitable food and thus encouraging them to remain, 

 occurred to me. So I hastened to the spot with small pans and bags of feed — 

 sorghum, millet, wheat, buckwheat, kaffir corn, cracked corn, and sunflower 

 seed. The pans were wired in the trees where the Grosbeaks had been seen 

 feeding, and filled with a mixture of the different seeds; for, as yet, I knew not 

 their preference. The supply of dried cherries having become exhausted, 

 other fruit-bearing branches were brought in and fastened near the pans. 

 Everything promised well. Chickadees and Nuthatches found the pans 



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