Length -- 8 inches. Two inches shorter than the robin.
Male -- Forehead, shoulders, and underneath clear yellow: dull
yellow on lower back; sides of the head, throat, and breast
olive-brown. Crown, tail, and wings black, the latter with
white secondary feathers. Bill heavy and blunt, and yellow.
Female -- Brownish gray, more less suffused with yellow. Wings
and tail blackish, with some white feathers.
Range -- Interior of North America. Resident from Manitoba
northward. Common winter visitor in northwestern United States
and Mississippi Valley; casual winter visitor in northern
Atlantic States.
In the winter of 1889-90 Eastern people had the rare treat of becoming
acquainted with this common bird of the Northwest, that, in one of its erratic
travels, chose to visit New England and the Atlantic States, as far south as
Delaware, in great numbers. Those who saw the evening grosbeaks then remember
how beautiful their yellow plumage -- a rare winter tint -- looked in the
snow-covered trees, where small companies of the gentle and ever tame visitors
enjoyed the buds and seeds of the maples, elders, and evergreens. Possibly
evening grosbeaks were in vogue for the next season's millinery, or perhaps
Eastern ornithologists had a sudden zeal to investigate their structural
anatomy. At any rate, these birds, whose very tameness, that showed slight
acquaintance with mankind, should have touched the coldest heart, received the
warmest kind of a reception from hot shot. The few birds that escaped to the
solitudes of Manitoba could not be expected to tempt other travellers eastward
by an account of their visit. The bird is quite likely to remain rare in the
East.
But in the Mississippi Valley and throughout the northwest, companies of from
six to sixty may be regularly counted upon as winter neighbors on almost every
farm. Here the females keep up a busy chatting, like a company of cedar birds,
and the males punctuate their pauses with a single shrill note that gives
little indication of their vocal powers. But in the solitude of the northern
forests the love-song is said to resemble the robin's at the start. Unhappily,
after a most promising beginning, the bird suddenly stops, as if he were out
of breath.