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ings and are a delight to all who see and hear them. I have never been 
conscious of hearing the female sing, but know from experience that the 
male bird gives a melodious warble that seems to express ecstatic joy. 
He sometimes sings while on the wing and he sings all day, even at hot 
high noon when other birds are silent. In her book Western Birds, Harriet 
Williams Myers says, “The call of the young birds is the most musical of 
any single call note I know in the bird world. It is a liquid Whe-o and 
is given by the nestlings as they follow the parents about in the trees.” 
The black-headed grosbeaks, like others of their close relations, are devoted 
parents. They sometimes rear two or three broods in a season. 
The evening grosbeak is, hike Widsith, a far traveler. His range ex- 
tends from the northwestern part of the United States and western Canada 
east to northern Michigan; south in winter irregularly to Kansas, Iowa, 
Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, etc.; eastward, irregularly and in winter only, to 
Ontario, New York, and New England. Its normal breeding territory is 
western Canada, but it shares with the pine siskin, the crossbills, and the 
Bohemian waxwing an indifference to any established breeding territory. 
“Thus it goes wandering through the land, few or many together, winter 
and summer, settling for a season and rearing its family in most unexpected 
places. Normally it belongs in the coniferous forests of the West, but it 
has been found nesting among cultivated evergreens far from such sur- 
reundings.” 
There are three sub-species of the evening grosbeak. One sub-species 
sometimes is found as far south as southern Mexico. For the eastern race 
an east and west movement of over 1200 miles has been proven by banding 
operations. 
The irregular movements of this bird seem to be determined largely by 
food conditions. As it is always erratic in its appearances, they are fortu- 
nate who see a large flock or even one of these birds “of singular and 
striking beauty.” In Chicagoland the Morton Arboretum seems to be the 
chief haunt of this winter visitor. There last February over two dozen 
were seen in a tree together. Personally I saw but one, which at first 
sight was feeding on the ground under a tree. It flew to the center top of 
a tree in which twenty-eight cedar waxwings were perched. A male purple 
finch fiew in and alighted on a side twig of the tree. Then, as so often 
happens at inauspicious moments, an automobile passed on the nearby road 
and all the birds departed. I was reminded of the day, years before, when 
I had seen a large flock of these birds in a small town in eastern Washing- 
ton. The evening grosbeak has more white in its wings than other gros- 
beaks and its large white patches show at a great distance when it is in 
flight. 
The generic name of the evening grosbeak is derived from the Greek, 
referring to the Hesperides, “daughters of Night,’ who dwelt on the 
western verge of the world where the sun goes down. It was named in 
1825 by W. Cooper and was called “evening” because at that time it was 
observed to sing only at sundown. 
Dawson “gives three sorts of notes of the evening grosbeak as being 
