70 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
bluish-gray pink, and the feet of a grayish-pink color. 
Later I found that the birds fed on the berries of 
the poison ivy, red cedar, climbing bittersweet, and 
the buds and embryo needles of the pitch pine, 
together with the seeds of the box elder. The favorite 
food of the flock that I watched seemed always to 
be the pits of the wild black cherry (Prunus serotina). 
They would take the pits well out of sight back into 
their beaks, keeping their bills half open in a comical 
manner, as if they had a bone in the throat. A 
second later there would be a cracking noise and out 
would drop two nicely split segments of the cherry 
pits, the meat having been swallowed. Sometimes 
in the trees they would sidle along the limbs exactly 
as a parrot does along its perch. 
The authorities state that the evening grosbeak 
has no immature plumage, but passes after its first 
moulting immediately into full plumage. I saw one, 
however, that I am sure was in immature plumage. 
The back was yellowish instead of being gray, like 
the females’, and the wings were of a dirty white 
color instead of being mottled black and white, like 
the plumage of the females, or half black and half 
white, like the plumage of the males. Both sexes 
seemed to have the same call and gave it equally 
often. 
The history of the evening grosbeak illustrates 
the far-reaching and never-ending consequences of a 
falsehood. This bit of moralizing is called forth be- 
cause of the name of this sorely misdescribed bird. 
In three languages, English, Greek and Latin, the 
