SOME NOTES CONCERNING THE EVENING GROS- 
BEAK. 
BY AMOS W. BUTLER. 
The Evening Grosbeak is pre-eminently and typically a bird 
of the coniferous forests of the Northwest. The first specimen 
known was taken by Schoolcraft in 1823 near Sault Ste. Marie, 
Michigan, from which William Cooper described the species in 
the Ann. N. Y. Lyc. N. H., Jan. 10, 1825. Bonaparte figured 
it in 1828, and noted two other specimens that had been taken 
near Lake Athabasca. Sir John Richardson refers to specimens 
from Carlton House, British America. 
Wlule from these statements one gets some iaea oi ns range, 
yet the knowledge is but approximate, as we are just beginning 
to understand anything at all of its distribution. Ihe Valley of 
Mexico appears to be as far south as it has been found. There it 
spends its summers among the mountains and descends to the 
Valley to winter. It has been taken at intervals from there north, 
throughout the coniferous region, from the deserts of Arizona to 
the Barren Grounds of Arctic America. It spends the summer 
in the northwestern United States and western British America, 
from just east of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. From 
there it migrates very irregularly in autumn to the eastward, cas- 
ually reaching over a greater or less part of the eastern United 
States, north of a line drawn from the mouth of the Ohio east to 
the Atlantic. Dr. Kirtland, in the ‘Ohio Farmer’, March 24, 
i860, mentioned that the previous week on a certain day a female 
of this species was secured by a gentleman, and the following day 
he saw several others (near Cleveland). He said it had never 
before been taken east of Lake Michigan, but notes that Dr. Hoy 
has occasionally found it near Racine, Wisconsin. Dr. J. M. 
Wheaton, in his ‘Catalogue of Ohio Birds,’ tS6o [1861], men- 
tioned the capture of a specimen at Columbus in 1847, which he 
became satisfied was an error and afterwards corrected. 
Mr. Thomas Mcllwraith informs us of the first four records of 
the occurrence of these birds within the Province of Ontario, 
