FINCHES, SPARROWS, ETC.: EVENING GROSBEAK 687 
directions,” that it was questionable whether the nest could hold. 
The weight of the bird and the surrounding upturned twigs with their 
many stiff needles “ which formed a crude basket for the nest,” of course, 
helped, but Mr. Jensen thinks that the desperate mother bird “held 
on partly by gripping the nest material with her feet.” In any case, 
Mr. Talbot says, she “changed position several times in order to keep 
facing the shifting wind.” Her endurance was sorely tried, for the 
gale lasted for three hours. Meanwhile, the patient egg collector, 
Mr. Jensen, waited below until a momentary subsidence came, when 
he obtained his prize. 
That it is a prize will be realized when we remember that few nests 
of the Rocky Mountain Evening Grosbeak have ever been discovered, 
and that this is the second record for New Mexico, the first since 1901, 
during which time Mr. Jensen has searched unavailingly for nests “at 
intervals during eleven consecutive years.” 
When the nesting season was over, numbers of Grosbeaks again 
visited Santa Fe. On August 5, 1928, Mr. Jensen wrote: “The last 
three days the birds have been very abundant here and from my 
shop I can all day long hear their chirping and off and on see birds, 
two or three or four flying from one garden or grove to another. There 
must be several hundreds in town now, but they are not together in 
large flocks (MS). 
Concerning the abundance of the Grosbeaks in New Mexico, he 
states that in twelve years he has encountered only three of the enormous 
flocks, and only three or four times have the birds visited Santa Fe in 
large numbers. Although, as he expresses it, they “bunch up” and at 
times are seen in certain localities in great numbers, giving the impres¬ 
sion that they are common birds, he considers them really “ very rare,” 
and believes that there are no more Grosbeaks in New Mexico than there 
are wild Turkeys. “Let us suppose, he concludes convincingly, “that 
we see two to three thousand birds in Santa Fe during the spring and a 
few in other communities, then let these scatter over the many hundred 
square miles of the Sangre de Cristo Range in northern New Mexico 
and Colorado, and we will find very few T birds to a square mile” (MS). 
Although Mr. Jensen has found, when looking for nests, that the 
birds “seem to be able to keep quiet and out of sight,” when actually 
encountered, he says they always seem fearless. During his bird 
banding experiments with them, they have shown this strikingly, the 
untrapped birds of the flock staying in the trees close by while their 
comrades were banded, when the process was over, dropping un¬ 
concernedly to the ground to go on feeding. 
Additional Literature.—Dunton, E. IC., Bird-Lore, XIX, 310-314, 1917 (win¬ 
ter feeding in Vermont).— Ltgon, J. S., Auk, XL, 314-316, 1923 (nesting) —Lord, 
W. R., Bird-Lore, 9-11, 1902 (winter feeding in Oregon).— Sushkin, P. P., Auk, 
XLII, 256-261, 1925 (anatomy).— Willard, F. C., Condor, XII, 60-62, 1910. 
