Evening Grosbeak 409 



ning Grosbeak. Fitful and uncertain in the manner of its appear- 

 ance and coming unheralded, as it does, from the little known boreal 

 region where it makes its summer home, there is ever a captivating 

 mystery surrounding it, that adds a certain piquancy to its charm. 

 Wild and secluded as its native haunts are known to be, the un- 

 expected tameness and confiding nature which it displays while a 

 visitor among the dwellings of men, but serve to make it the more 

 an object of admiration. Its disappointing illusiveness, too, disap- 

 pearing as is its wont just when a temperate-zone summer seems 

 about to claim it for its own, arouses a speculative interest which 

 commands the attention year after year. Lingering thus in the 

 springtime until surrounded by all the fullness of verdure and many 

 settled activities of late May and associated then on intimate terms 

 with a varied throng of feathered comrades v/ho are busily engaged 

 with their domestic duties, it, suddenly, just as it seems certain that it 

 has at last decided to take up its abode among these strangers, dis- 

 appears from its long familiar haunts, between one day and the next, 

 and vanishes no one knows exactly whither, or for how long a so- 

 journ. A life time may be spent in close intimacy with birds and 

 yet the clear whistle or a gleam of the unique tri-colored vestments 

 of the Evening Grosbeak, never fails to secure a pause in one's occu- 

 pation and a moment passed in admiration and wonderment. Until 

 the remarkable and previously unnoted advent of thousands of these 

 birds into the whole northeastern portion of the United States in the 

 winter of 1889-90 the Evening Grosbeak, except in a few favored local- 

 ities, was a veritable will-o'-the-wisp, a sort of disembodied bird-spirit 

 to most ornithologists. 



In the northern portions of Minnesota the Evening Grosbeak often 

 makes its appearance early in the fall and as it frequently does not 

 leave the southern part of the State until late in the spring it is evi- 

 dent that many individuals of the species do not linger long in 

 their arctic nesting places after the duties directly incident to nidifica- 

 tion are completed. The considerable array of dates given above 

 will serve to show, in a definite manner, the times of arrival in t^he 

 fall and departure in the spring for a number of years and at various 

 localities throughout the State. The earliest date, it will be seen, 

 is Sept. 28, 1895, when a single bird was seen by Peabody at St. 

 Vincent in the Red River Valley close by the International Boundary 

 Line. There are early October records lor other localities in the 

 northernmost counties and by the last of that month they may oc- 

 casionally be found as far south as Minneapolis; but usually they are 

 seen for the first time in the southern part of the State during 

 November or early December. In the spring they frequently, if not 

 generally, remain in the southern part of Minnesota until May and 

 have been kept under daily observation at Minneapolis, latitude 45°, 

 as late as the third week of that month (May 17, 187G; May 19, 1879) 

 and at Lanesboro, Fillmore County, latitude 43° 45', Dr. Hvoslef has 

 several times recorded the "last" during the first half of May — (May 

 13, '84; May 4, '86; May 4, '89; May 14, '90). They are sometimes 

 more common during the spring months than during the winter, 

 seeming to congregate in large flocks, in favored localities, before 



