12 THE AUDUBON BULA Been 
plainly distinguishable: a low murmuring of pure tones, quite pleasant to 
the ear; a harsh but subdued rattle, or alarm note, wzzzt or wzzzp, 
familiarly similar to that of the crossbill; and the high-pitched shriek, 
which distinguishes the bird from all others, dimp.” All the birds of a 
flock are said to bring out this last astonishing note at precisely the same 
pitch. 
The food of the evening grosbeak consists largely of vegetal matter 
and chiefly of seeds. They also eat the buds of many deciduous trees and 
feed on a considerable number of winter fruits. Of all foods their prefer- 
ence is for apple seeds taken from frozen apples. The seeds of the box- 
elder and of the maple are a favorite diet. At the feeding stations they 
apparently prefer sunflower seeds to anything else unless box-elder seeds. 
Evening grosbeaks together with their chief associates, the pine siskin, the 
crossbills, and the purple finch, are said to be inordinately fond of salt. 
Evening grosbeaks have not infrequently been caged for considerable 
periods and do well in captivity. 
The blue grosbeak is the smallest of his tribe and is quite widely dis- 
tributed in the United States. This bird has a very slight place in a list 
of birds of the Chicago region. A few have been reported for Cook County, 
but the bird is seldom seen farther north than southern Illinois, and it is 
not often seen there. The male bird is distinguished in that he is one of 
the few birds that is really blue, though a dull blue. He has some black 
about his face but not so much as does the cardinal. He is ‘marked with 
two brown wing bars. His mate is a brownish bird indistinctly streaked. 
In a hot, hot Kansas summer, so hot that one could hardly stand in the 
sun without the protection of a shade, I have seen them, and even cerulean 
warblers, come down to a stream to drink. 
These birds live in bush-grown fields, swampy thickets, and the edges 
of woods. They are considered the most shy of the grosbeaks, especially 
in the breeding season. 
“The nest of the blue grosbeak is usually near the ground, often being 
suspended between a few upright stems of tall weeds, in a bush, or on a 
low branch of a small tree.” The nest usually contains a cast snake skin 
in its construction. PS 
During the nesting season blue grosbeaks eat large quantities of injuri- 
ous insects and feed them exclusively to their young. Later they sometimes 
collect in flocks and move into fields of oats and rice where they may do 
considerable harm. Yet they consume almost five times as much insect 
food as grain and some of the insects they devour are especially destructive, 
such as weevils. More than a fourth of the seasonal food is composed of 
grasshoppers. A tenth of the bird’s subsistence is made up of caterpillars 
and cotton cutworms, enemies of sugar beets and cotton. Western blue 
grosbeaks are said to be especially fond of mustard seeds. 
The territory of the blue grosbeak extends entirely across the southern 
half of the United States; but west of Louisiana there are so many differ- 
ences in coloration of the bird that scientists have made of them a separate 
variety, the western blue grosbeak. Perhaps other distinctions should be 
