28 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



full plumage. With their black heads, golden foreheads, thick 

 greenish- white beaks, wings half black and half white, dusky - 

 gold backs and breasts and forked, black tails, they impressed 

 me as the most spectacular birds I had ever seen. Perhaps this 

 was owing to the winter background of cold rain, brown fields 

 and leafless trees and the rarity of the birds themselves. Siill I 

 think, however, that under any surroundings a male evening 

 grosbeak would always attract attention. The place where I 

 saw them was in the township of New Lisbon in Burlington 

 County, New Jersey, about two miles from the New Lisbon 

 station at a place called Lower Mill. The flock seemed to be 

 restless rather than shy. I could approach within twenty feet 

 of them but they never stayed in one place for any length of 

 time. Besides the sparrow-like note, which first attracted my 

 attention, they gave a sort of trilling chirp. Once they all 

 started like a flock of Goldfinches or Grackles chirping and call- 

 ing together, making a chirring chorus. When they flew they 

 sometimes gave a call-note. The resemblance of the bird to a 

 monstrous Goldfinch was very marked, just as the Pine Gros- 

 beak looks like a huge Purple Finch and the Blue Grosbeak 

 like an overgrown Indigo-bird. When I first saw them one of 

 the birds had a pod of the yellow locust in its beak. On sub. 

 sequent occasions I often found them in locust trees and would 

 see on the ground pieces of freshly opened pods but I cannot 

 say that I ever saw them actually eating one of the locust beans. 

 Their favorite food at all the times I have observed them were 

 the pits of the common wild black-cherries (Primus serotina). 



On February 11th I again went to New Lisbon and found 

 the whole flock of Grosbeaks feeding, this time on the ground 

 not far from a house at about half-past ten in the morning. I 

 followed them for some time around a circle in the clearings 

 among pitch-pine trees, about a hundred yards in diameter and 

 found that they went from one wild-cherry tree to another. 

 Afterwards my son Gurdon first discovered that 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. 



I went back to my cabin and brought some of my family and 



