280 FINCHES, SPARROWS, ETC. 



States. At irregular intervals it invades the northern Mississippi 

 Valley in numbers, while still more rarely it extends its wanderings 

 to the north Atlantic States. It travels in flocks of from six or eight 

 to sixty individuals which by their tameness show their ignorance of 

 man and his ways. They feed largely on the buds or seeds of trees — 

 maple, elder, and box elder. Their notes are described by different 

 observers as a shrill " cheepy-teet'' and a " frog-like peep,'' while one 

 writer remarks that " the males have a single metallic cry like the 

 note of a trumpet, and the females a loud chattering like the large 

 Cherry Birds {Ampelis parrulus).'" Their song is given as a wander- 

 ing, jerky warble, beginning low, suddenly increasing in power, and 

 as suddenly ceasing, as though the singer were out of breath. 



During the winter and early spring of 1890 there was a phenom- 

 enal incursion of Evening Grosbeaks into the Northern States, ac- 

 counts of which, by Amos W. Butler, will be found in The Auk, ix, 

 1892, pp. 238-247 ; x, 1893, pp. 155-157. 



515. Finicola enucleator {Linn.). Pine Grosbeak. Ad. 6 . — 



Slaty gray, more or less strongly washed with rose-red, strongest on the 

 crown, rump, upper tail-coverts, and breast; wings fuscous, their coverts 

 edged with wliite ; tail fuscous. Ad. 9 . — Slaty gray, crown, upper tail-cov- 

 erts, and breast more or less strongly washed with olive-yellow; wings and 

 tail as in the $ . /?«.— Resembles the 9 . L., 9-08 ; W., 4-36 ; T., 3-67 ; B., -54 



Range. — " Northern portions of the northern hemisphere, breeding far 

 nortli ; in winter south, in North America, irregularly to the nortliern United 

 States." 



Washington, casual in winter. Sing Sing, irregular W. V., Dec. 18 to 

 Apl. 12. Cambridge, irregular W. V., frequently common, sometimes abun- 

 dant, Nov. to Mch. 



Nest., of twigs and rootlets lined with finer materials, in coniferous trees a 

 few feet up. Eggs., " pale greenish blue, spotted and blotched with dark brown 

 surface markings and lilac shell spots, r05 x -74." 



The Pine Grosbeak, like the Spruce Partridge and Canada Jay, may 

 be said to find its true home in the coniferous forest or Canadian belt, 

 which crosses the continent diagonally from Maine to Alaska. 



Like many of its congeners in this inhospitable region, it nests so 

 early in the springtime that the winter's frost and snow are still 

 dominant among the evergreens when the eggs come to claim the at- 

 tention of the pair. 



Its habits at this season are but little known, as very few natural- 

 ists have had the opportunity of seeing it in its native pine wood. 

 But in midwinter, when it comes southward in search of food, it is a 

 well-known frequenter, in flocks, of plantations of mountain-ash trees, 

 or groups of sumach bushes, whose unfallen berries provide it with a 

 bountiful supply of nourishing diet. 



