“iges isin General Notes. PA 
Some six of them were males. I had never seen the bird before, but it was, 
of course, easy to identify it by the thick white beak and by the bright gold, 
ivory white and velvety black of the males. A male Evening Grosbeak in 
full plumage with its black head, golden forehead, thick white beak, black 
and white wings, golden back and breast and forked black tail impresses me 
as the most spectacular bird that I have ever seen. Probably this was 
owing to the winter background of cold rain, brown fields and leafless trees. 
New Lisbon is in the center of the pine-barren region. This flock seemed to 
be feeding on the locust tree as one of the birds had a pod in its mouth. 
On subsequent occasions I would frequently find them in locust trees and 
there were always on the ground pieces of freshly opened pods. The favo- 
rite food during the times that I observed them appeared to be the pits of 
the common Wild Cherry (Prunus serotina). They fed in a circle in the 
clearing about one hundred yards in diameter and were frequently found 
on the ground under the various Wild Cherry trees in this tract. The 
ground under these trees was covered with cherry-stones neatly split in 
half, while the droppings of the birds showed that they had fed there for 
a considerable space of time. The birds were restless, but not particularly 
wild. They would feed together in the trees for a time and then fly all 
together to the ground and then back again to the trees. I was able to 
approach several times within about thirty feet of the flock. On inquiry 
the miller reported that he had never seen or heard of these birds before 
although he had lived in that part of the country all his life. They had a 
clear trilling note besides the chirp above mentioned. At times they 
would all join in a chirring chorus. They reminded me very much of a 
flock of overgrown Goldfinches with their forked tails and the gold and 
black and white of their plumage, just as a flock of Pine Grosbeaks makes 
one think of a flock of overgrown Purple Finches. J am under the impres- 
sion that I heard the call-note of this bird the night before in a swamp near 
my camp though at the time I thought that it was the chirp of some winter- 
ing Robins. , 
I saw and studied this particular flock on January 29, again on February 
11, February 12, February 17 and February 22. On February 11 and 12 
the flock had been reduced to about forty birds with only three males. On 
February 17 there were not more than twenty birds there and not more 
than one or two males. On the afternoon of February 17 a friend of mine 
reported that he had found a detached pair. On February 22 there had 
been a light fall of snow and the birds were not found at all in the usual 
place. Two flew overhead in the early afternoon and in the middle of the 
afternoon four females were found in the top of a pitch-pine tree. The 
miller told me that every morning this flock would come into his dooryard 
at dawn and even feed on crumbs put out on the porch by the children. 
He said that the full flock at that time was nearly a hundred and that 
even so late as February 21 there had been seventy or eighty of them in his 
yard. His figures, of course, were only estimated. A flock of 65 was seen 
by Dr. E. P. Darlington, at Browns-Mills-in-the-Pines, a little farther 
east, on January 10, 1917, and they had been seen a number of times by 
Miss Rachel Weston near the Browns-Mills Inn. This is doubtless the 
