BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 291 
Family FRINGILLID. 
COCCOTHRAUSTES VESPERTINA (Cooper). (514.) 
EVENING GROSBEAK. 
In characteristics, habits and its history, the Evening Gros- 
beak is a wonderful, if not a mysterious bird. The peculiar 
combination of its colors in plumage, the huge size of its 
powerful bill, as well as many other things, almost undefinable, 
in its feeding, peeping and flying combine to constituteit a 
very remarkable bird. It is cheerfully assigned the place of 
honor, at the head of our list of the Finch family. After all, 
however, it is least known. It is but recently that it has been 
very closely observed, and very little has been learned of its 
summer habits. It appears in the vicinity of our homes so 
suddenly, so mysteriously, that it seems like a phantom, drop- 
ped out of the autumn clouds. Its entire absence in summer 
contributes materially to this. It comes when most of those 
birds we know, and love, have gone—when the speciral forms 
of the leafless trees are apparently dead, to reclothe them 
with life, and by their peeping, recall the spring. Their trust- 
fulness scarcely recognizes the presence of man. Except their 
frog-like peeping they give nothing by which to judge their 
powers of song, 
But silent and songless, no story he tells, 
Not even to whisper. the place where he dwelis; 
And when the bright sun to the northward returns, 
Like a ghost, flies away from the land that he spurns. 
I had resided here many years before I saw one of them in the 
flesh or the skin, notwithstanding my extensive observations, 
and my familiarity with every local collection besides my own, 
then known. The individual met with, so far as I have known, 
was found by Mr. T. A. Whitmore, of this city, on Nov. 9, 
1870, in the timber bordering the banks of Basset’s creek, 
within or near the corporate limits. Its strongly marked 
colors and huge bill, assured him that it was a new bird, and 
after a prolonged and exhausting pursuit he finally was 
rewarded by securing it. After it was mounted and placed in 
his collection I had the pleasure of examining it many times. 
On Dec. 26th following, a specimen of each sex, in mature 
plumage, was obtained near the city out of a small flock feed- 
ing upon the cottonwoods. 
