284 FRINGILLID^E I FINCHES. 



BLUE GROSBEAK. 



GUIRACA COERULEA (L.) Sw. 



Chars. Male, adult: Uniform rich dark blue, with black face, wings, 

 and tail, and two chestnut bars on the wings. Bill dark horn color ; 

 feet blackish. Length, 6.50-7.00 ; extent, 10.25 ; wing, 3.30 ; tail, 

 3.10. Female: Smaller; plain warm brown above, paler flaxen 

 brown below, the wings with brownish-white crossbars. Young 

 males at first resemble the females ; then show mixed brown and 

 blue ; then blue interrupted with white below. 



The Blue Grosbeak is thoroughly a Southern bird, 

 whose normal northward extension barely takes it into 

 New England, as a very rare and probably only casual 

 summer visitor. The name occurs in Herrick's "Cat- 

 alogue of the Birds of Grand Menan " (1873, P- 8) ; 

 and Mr. G. A. Boardman found it near Calais, Maine, 

 in the spring of 1861 (Pr. Bost. Soc., ix, 1862, p. 127). 

 Mr. Merriam found no authority for including the spe- 

 cies in his "Review of Connecticut Birds." 



Referring to the occurrences above mentioned, Mr. 

 Allen says in 1878 (Bull. Essex Inst., x, p. 33), that 

 the species "is surely to be added, sooner or later, 

 to the list of Massachusetts birds. Its occurrence is 

 a -priori far more probable than that of many spe- 

 cies that have been found here." He has himself the 

 pleasure of verifying this inference, in the Nuttall Bul- 

 letin of July, 1880, p. 184, where he gives the details 

 of a Massachusetts specimen a fine male bird shot 

 by Mr. Gordon Plummer, in Brookline, on the 29th 

 of May of this year. There is no doubt that recorded 

 occurrences in lower New England will multiply as 

 time goes on. 



