THE OOLOGIST 



241 



unknown." Coues' Key to North 

 American Birds. Not mentioned in 

 Coues' Birds of the Colorado Valley. 

 Coues' Birds of the Northwest says: 

 "Not procured by either of the expe- 

 ditions." The scientists did not quite 

 kill the grosbeak with Latin names. 

 Fringilla vespertina, Cocothraustes 

 vespertina, Hesperphona vespertina, 

 Hesi)erphona vesjJertina var. montana, 

 Coccothraustes bonapartii, and Laxia 

 bonai)artii. 



No plates of nest and eggs of even- 

 ing grosbeak are figured in any of my 

 twenty American oologists — Brewer, 

 Benhire, Capen, Davis', Maynard, In- 

 gersoll, Reid or Gentry; or in the pre- 

 tentious English or German bird 

 books before me. Walter Raine of To- 

 ronto, who has a stupendous collec- 

 tion, and collectors all over the world, 

 says in Bird Nesting in Northwest 

 Canada: "Eggs of the evening gros- 

 beak are almost unknown in collec- 

 tions and are therefore very valuable." 

 Merrill was the first to see it nesting 

 in an inaccessible Oregon pine. The 

 first nest and eggs on record w'ere 

 taken by John Swinburne in a thickly 

 wooded canyon fifteen miles west of 

 Springville. Ai)ache county, Arizona, 

 .June .T, 1SS4, the second was found 

 xVIay 10, 1886, by E. H. Fisk in Yolo 

 county, California. I have never seen 

 an egg and know of none held by any 

 of my exchange correspondents today. 

 Eggs of rose-breasted, blue and black- 

 headed grosbeaks I find are common 

 with collectors, but pine grosbeak's 

 eggs are also rare because they breed 

 late in February in icy surroundings. 

 Both rosy-bi-east and pine make fine 

 cage birds, sing well and breed in con- 

 finement. But the evening bird does 

 not thrive in captivity and its song is 

 not attractive. 



The best popular description of the 

 evening grosbeak is in Frank Chap- 

 man's Handbook of North American 

 the morrow." 



Birds. Ridgway has the best scienti- 

 fic description, and the best handy col- 

 ored plate is in the last edition of 

 Reed's Land Birds East of the Rock- 

 ies. But far and away ahead of the 

 big-wig bird doctors, in interest and 

 records and incidents of the great 

 eastern flights, in winter of 1889 and 

 1890, by Amos W. Cutler, in Vol. IX, 

 pages 238 of the Auk, and in the Auk, 

 Vol. X, page l.j.j. In that migration — 

 if it could be so called — there were 

 half a dozen Connecticut records. I 

 saw only pines at Norwich that sea- 

 son, but when hunting snowy owls 

 around the Winthrop woods on Fort 

 Hill and Bushy Point, Groton, for two 

 days, I followed a bunch of evenings 

 feeding on the swamp and sugar ma- 

 ples, false bittersweet and rotten ap- 

 ple seeds. There were about forty 

 birds and only six good males. I shot 

 none, but in that great flight many 

 specimens were taken for American 

 and foreign cabinets. My own birds 

 have data as late as April 1, 1890, in 

 New York. It is a long mark forward 

 in the public attitude towards birds 

 that few will now be welcomed with 

 a charge of No. 11 shot. 



Audubon's glowing account of first 

 meeting a rosy grosbeak in full song 

 is familiar and often quoted. But lis- 

 ten to this flowery description of the 

 dress of the evening grosbeak by Dr. 

 Elliot Coues: "A bird of distinguish- 

 ed a])pearance, whose very name sug- 

 gests the far-away land of the dipping 

 sun, and the tuneful romance which 

 the wild bird throws around the fad- 

 ing light of day; clothed in striking 

 color contrasts of black, white and 

 gold, he seems to represent the alle- 

 gory of diurnal transmutation; for his 

 sable ])inions close around the bright- 

 ness of his vesture, as night encom- 

 l)asses the golden hues of sunset, 

 while the clear white space enfolded 

 in these tints foretells the dawn of 



