Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Singing with the heart

Somewhere, hidden up there in the tree, a Rose-breasted Grosbeak has a lot to say. His song is operatic. I can get only a glimpse of his strawberry-red cravat before he disappears again into the leaves.

The way they sound

A Rose-breasted Grosbeak’s song is full of variety and feeling. Here’s a 28-second sample, recorded on my phone as the bird sang in my tree. Note the dramatic slides in pitch and (near the end) a fast trill.

The male does most of the vocalizing, but both male and female sing. Sometimes either one will sing while sitting on the nest. I thought if I watched where the song was coming from, I could spot the nest. I didn’t find it.

The way they look

The male’s and the female’s colors are so different you might be fooled into thinking these were not the same species.

Rose-breasted Grosbeaks: (A) Male; (B) Female. [Click an image to enlarge it.]

He has the strawberry cravat against a white breast and a black head. She has a striped breast and bold white stripe over the eye.

But both are the same shape and have the same thick bill — the GROSS beak. (Originally, “gross” meant big. Later it came to mean bulky.)

Rose-breasted Grosbeaks have a thick bill: (A) the male; (B) the female.

Rose-breasted Grosbeaks love to crack open sunflower seeds. With bill and tongue they adroitly extract the seed and spit out the shell. They also eat a lot of insects, which they smash in their beaks rather than beating their prey to death against branches the way many other birds do.

The sound of red

This is a bird that is easy to hear but hard to see. If you hear its song, look up in the trees for a spot of red. It could be your lucky day.

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