Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America

The book that made American bird-watching possible in the field: keys, plumages, songs and habits for every species of the East, by the man who ran ornithology at the American Museum.

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States (At irregular intervals it)

At irregular intervals it invades the northern Mississippi Valley in numbers, while still more rarely it extends its wanderings to the north Atlantic States. It travels in flocks of from six or eight to sixty individuals which by their tameness show their ignorance of man and his ways. They feed largely on the buds or seeds of treesmaple, elder, and box elder. Their notes are described by different observers as a shrill "cheepy-teet," and a "frog-like peep," while one writer remarks that "the males have a single metallic cry like the note of a trumpet, and the females a loud chattering like the large Cherry Birds (Ampelis garrulus)." Their song is given as a wandering, jerky warble, beginning low, suddenly increasing in power, and as suddenly ceasing, as though the singer were out of breath. During the winter and early spring of 1890 there was a phenomenal incursion of Evening Grosbeaks into the Northern States, accounts of which, by Amos W. Butler, will be found in The Auk, ix, 1892, pp. 238-247; x, 1893, pp. 155-157. 515. Pinicola enucleator (Linn.). PINE GROSBEAK. Ad. 8.- Slaty gray, more or less strongly washed with rose-red, strongest on the crown, rump, upper tail-coverts, and breast; wings fuscous, their coverts edged with white; tail fuscous. Ad. q. - Slaty gray, crown, upper tail-coverts, and breast more or less strongly washed with olive-yellow; wings and tail as in the 8. Im. - Resembles the 2. L., 9.08; W., 436; T., 3.67; B., 54.

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