410 Evening Grosbeak 



taking their departure for the north. Thus Dr. Hvoslef writes that 

 after having been common at Lanesboro throughout the winter of 

 1883-4, the Evening Grosbeaks assembled in the valley of the Root 

 River during April and early May in such great numbers that they 

 were sometimes among the most abundant birds in the timber below 

 the village, "making the spring woods resound with their noisy notes." 

 Some years they are entirely absent or very rare or appear only in 

 certain places for a short time wandering over the country in an 

 erratic manner. Other winters they are abundant and are to be 

 found almost everywhere in considerable flocks. During the first 

 three months of the year 1890 there was a remarkable incursion of 

 these birds into the northern United States.* They appeared in great 

 numbers not only in their accustomed winter haunts, but in regions 

 where they had not previously been known, as throughout almost all 

 of New England. The winter was a comparatively mild one and it 

 is probable that their southward movement was determined by a fail- 

 ure further north of the food supply upon which they depend rather 

 than by climatic conditions. 



From the time of their appearance in Minnesota in the fall until 

 the spring months they are commonly seen in little companies of 

 six or a dozen individuals. Single birds or pairs may now and then 

 be encountered probably separated for a time from their companions. 

 Their movements, the places where they assemble and the length of 

 time they stay, are entirely dependent upon the food supply. They 

 are especially fond of the keys or fruit of the box elder, sugar maple 

 and ash and from this source they derive their chief sustenance dur- 

 ing their stay in southern Minnesota. They are very adroit in neatly 

 cutting transversely with their powerful beaks the dry covering of 

 the juicy kernels and dexterously and quickly extracting the latter. 

 The light wings of the keys go eddying to the ground below which is 

 soon thickly strewn with these bits of refuse and gives plain indica- 

 tion of the feeding places of the Grosbeaks. The fruit of the box 

 elder and ash they nimbly secure from the clusters hanging through- 

 out the winter on the ends of the branches but the keys of the sugar 

 maple, shed the previous season, they pick up from the ground usually 

 after the snow has melted in the spring. They eat also the seeds 

 of the berries of the hack-berry, high bush-cranberry, mountain ash, 

 juniper, cedar and probably also when hard pressed the seeds of any 

 edible berry or fruit that offers. The skins and pulp they always 

 reject, even splitting open crab apples to get at the seeds within. 

 They generally locate wherever they find an abundant supply of this 

 sort of food and remain in the vicinity until it is exhausted or they 

 are called away by the migratory instinct. As spring comes on they 

 are apt to assemble in sugar maple groves and pass their time partly 

 on the ground picking up and shelling out the sprouting keys and 

 partly in the branches above piping in unison their spring notes. Fre- 

 quent mention is made by writers of this grosbeak eating the buds 

 of various trees, but after close observation and the examination of 

 many stomachs I am confident that it is very rarely, if at all, that this 



* Brewster in Appendix to Minot's Land-Birds and Game-Birds of 

 New Eng-land, second edition, 1895, 470-471; Butler, Auk, IX, 1892, 238-247. 



