| Show Out of Doors in the West Sketches of Natural History in the Rocky Mountain Plateau Edited by J. H. Professor of Nature Study in the University of Utah Three Remarkable Birds of Our Own Country The Blue the Black-Headed and the Western Evening From a Lecture by S. H. The original heading of the last article was mislaid by the printer and a new one had to be improvised by the Goodwin should have been credited with the description of the meadowlark and the and assistant ornithologist of the of Agri with the extensive condensed by on the food and economic value of these and serviceable friends of the farmer and all other The cut of chickadees was inverted an oversight that few readers would since these birds were shown above and should have been shown below the Editor The Western Evening A. First in order among the birds mentioned in this address stands the Western Evening This is a bird that comes to us from its breeding grounds in the ordinarily early in The earliest date of its arrival here noted by me is November 24 while it has remained with according THE WESTERN EVENING GROSBEAK Drawn for this article by an Eighth Grade Pupil of the State Normal Training my Bird as late as May 31 These grosbeaks are that they always in large or They are to be met in trees which retain their seed-pods till late in the or even till the following such as the box catalpa and black These pods the birds' wrench open with their strong bills and feed upon the while the shattered husks are strewn upon the ground or snow to tell where the grosbeaks' larder Frequently the scattered hulls of the lying upon the snow along the have been the first intimation of the advent of these It is a most interesting sight to see a flock of these striking though not loudly colored birds' alight in a tree and proceed to At such times they utter only an occasional lisping of a social There they will remain till frightened or till a desire for a change in the bill of fare takes them They Nest in the I have not found the nests of range is given as being in the Canadian and i. in the as the zones have been arranged by and this zone does not extend into our But with this as many the exact range is not easily marked and in common with nearly all living have a disconcerting way of disregarding the boundaries men have marked out for for I found a pair of these grosbeaks at Lehi on August Their presence there at that particular though not yet was pretty good evidence that at least one pair of evening gros- beaks had spent the breeding time in A Strange V The song of this species next to that of the yellow-headed one of the strangest in all of in it bears a very strong resemblance to the song of that listening to the song of the Lehi as the shades of evening I simply gave up in despair when I attempted to describe this strange musical The Mountain Pine B. Of the Rocky Mountain l ine I need not more than to say that it is a beautiful with red poured over an that it remains in where it rears its and that its nest is reported to have been taken up at While this bird remains in the its eastern relative the pine grosbeak to come familiarly about our doorstep back in New the and it did not hesitate to feed at will along the streets of the The Black-Headed and the Of the common Utah form the black-headed grosbeak I have already spoken quite fully of its If you turn to the Special Bulletin of the State Normal you will find a brief account of this D. Of the cardinal I need not as the bird does not come into our They are beautiful and we would welcome them into our The Western Blue But while this brilliant fellow does not come to we have a relative of that ventures to spend a portion of the year in the southern part of state the western blue grosbeak and he is a beauty when seen in the top of a small bush or along the fence hedgerow with the deep green of alfalfa fields about C. Hart head of the Biological Washington this bird common in the lower Santa Clara Washington May but so far as I know it had not been reported from any other part of the till I visited in the extreme southeastern part of in the summer of from June 24 to July 1 I met with this subspecies Whenever I went and I did this every and remained out till the heat drove me in I met this vivid bit of bird coloring about the edges of the in the luxuriant willow hedgerows that marks the course of all the as well as the and in trees along the quiet streets of the When I rode up the San Juan river to a point beyond the ruins of the six- teen-room Cliff Dweller's I found this bird now and again in the scanty corn patches and small cottonwoods near the river's Song of the Its song was a disappointment to partly to the fact that I have often heard the glorious song of its eastern relative the exquisitely marked rose-breasted grosbeak for eleven years have been familiar with the still more beautiful song of our own black-headed My field note book shows that this feeling of disappointment found its way into my which were in as while in the presence of the performer song of the western blue grosbeak is little more than a disappointing with no resemblance to the song of his black-headed whose glorious music is always a feature of any landscape where he is to be But this bird is a most industrious songster he is and and must be given credit for doing the best he can and doing it all of the The bird is smaller than the other members of the His coat is a rich navy almost ultramarine set off by two bands of different shades of brown on the with bluish-black stripes on the middle of the and brownish-black Fifth Family of Land A few more general observations may appropriately be made We have passed to the fifth family of the order we are and have taken up the an order that contains the buntings and belong the crossbills and grosbeaks a great host of thick-billed numbering something like all and distributed throughout the world with the exception of There are some 34 and 90 or more species on this practically all of which are represented in the United About one-seventh of all our birds belong to this one Marks of the These birds are characterized by conical by nostrils that are always high up near the of the by the axis of the bill being always at an angle with that of the to put it the corners of the mouth are drawn downward these birds are at the by wings that have only nine the first of which is about half an inch shorter than the third or the one or the other of which is the Color and For the most the members of this family are rarely exceeding eight inches in and the larger number of them are in The plain colored birds of this family some of which are very difficult to identify are usually found in the fields and about the or on the while those more gaily such as the the grosbeaks and are met with in bushes and A Musical As a these birds- are some of in rank with the thrushes and In this class we must place such birds as the while the songs of the black-headed and blue rank with the melody of much more famous But the brave little ditty of the ubiquitous song sparrow is more widely known better appreciated than is the song of any other member of this They Are All of the members of this family are that they are seed-eaters and many of them eat not only buds and other soft but fruits and insects as In considerable damage is done by certain members of this as English which eats large quantities of fruits and both the house finch and the purple finch occasion some The house finch works great injury to the fruit of and the purple finch makes serious raids upon the buds of the peach and apple trees in the And to the harmful list must be the black-headed in some he does a good deal of mischief in the and vegetable pays more than market price 01 all he Have a Slight This group of birds is to the degree that tte humming night and other purely birds Being the main they are nol I dependent upon a climate that makes possible a supply hi But practically all of them move away from their some of those that nest far to the north spend the winter with Among these are the western evening g the the and others while or of that rear their brood with to some extent go south in the winter and are replaced lj others of the same species that nested a little to the north of m Their migration is hardly per j and this is es true of the song spat Still other forms undertake a perpendicular com ing down when the cold weather t comes into the valleys from tit j mountains where they Six Genera of t With these points of general characterization before the student may proceed to consider special representatives of this extensive Here we disregard the order in which the genera would naturally so as-to bring together certain form for one reason or would be first or would If associated together by those have not given the subject special For there are at least six genera of and they do not follow one another in regular but are separated by a number other forms in each have described only those grosbeaks that occur in Their Colors and The grosbeaks differ materially in coloring and also in the of country they 1 in but they are all TW in at least two are stocky and have 1 might appear to be abnormal large The different species are in they range from a scarlet to an some have rose-cole others have bright ye A Mh olive nd white Where They Are 11 The scarlet and blue members this group live south of the portion of our and cold weather approaches betake themselves still farmer to the The scarlet ird does' not come to but lie blue grosbeak I found at The pine grosbeak he of lie red over grayish olive aunts the where he the black-headed gros-eak lives in the valleys and to come about the orchards though I found under the arch of the Caro-ne in White miles from any human The western evening he of the and and and olives Dines to us from his northern and spend the winter with I is coal the most article known to when instead f going to the buyer it goes to ie k |
