Rose-Breasted Grosbeak #5
by J McCombie
Title
Rose-Breasted Grosbeak #5
Artist
J McCombie
Medium
Photograph - Untouched
Description
This piece has been featured in the FAA Group, "All Natural Beauty of this World".
Bursting with black, white, and rose-red, male Rose-breasted Grosbeaks are like an exclamation mark at your bird feeder or in your binoculars. Females and immatures are streaked brown and white with a bold face pattern and enormous bill. Look for these birds in forest edges and woodlands. Listen, too, for their distinctive voices. They sound like American Robins, but listen for an extra sweetness, as if the bird had operatic training; they also make a sharp chink like the squeak of a sneaker.
Rose-breasted Grosbeaks are stocky, medium-sized songbirds with very large triangular bills. They are broad-chested, with a short neck and a medium-length, squared tail. Adult males are black-and-white birds with a brilliant red chevron extending from the black throat down the middle of the breast. Females and immatures are brown and heavily streaked, with a bold whitish stripe over the eye. Males flash pink-red under the wings; females flash yellowish. Both sexes show white patches in the wings and tail.
These chunky birds use their stout bills to eat seeds, fruit, and insects. They are also frequent visitors to backyard bird feeders, where they eat sunflower seeds with abandon. The sweet, rambling song of a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak is a familiar voice of eastern forests; their sharp “chink” calls are also very distinctive. The song is a subdued mellow warbling, resembling a more refined, sweeter version of the American robin's (Turdus migratorius). Males start singing early, occasionally even when still in winter quarters. The call is a sharp pink or pick, somewhat reminiscent of a woodpecker call.
Rose-breasted Grosbeaks breed in eastern forests; you can find them among both deciduous trees and conifers. They are most common in regenerating woodlands and often concentrate along forest edges and in parks. During migration, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks frequent fruiting trees to help fuel their flights to Central and South America.
The rose-breasted grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus) is a large, seed-eating grosbeak in the cardinal family (Cardinalidae). It is primarily a foliage gleaner. It breeds in cool-temperate North America, migrating to tropical America in winter.
Adult birds are 18–22 cm (7.1–8.7 in) long, span 29–33 cm (11–13 in) across the wings and weigh 35–65 g (1.2–2.3 oz). Females were found to be marginally smaller in standard measurements, but in some seasons were marginally heavier than males when banded in Pennsylvania. At all ages and in both sexes, the beak is dusky horn-colored, and the feet and eyes are dark. The adult male in breeding plumage has a black head, wings, back, and tail, and a bright rose-red patch on its breast; the wings have two white patches and rose-red linings. Its underside and rump are white. Males in nonbreeding plumage have largely white underparts, supercilium, and cheeks. The upperside feathers have brown fringes, and most wing feathers white ones, giving a scaly appearance. The bases of the primary remiges are also white. The coloration renders the adult male rose-breasted grosbeak (even while wintering) unmistakable if seen well. The adult female has dark grey-brown upperparts – darker on wings and tail –, a white supercilium, a buff stripe along the top of the head, and black-streaked white underparts, which except in the center of the belly have a buff tinge. The wing linings are yellowish, and on the upperwing are two white patches like in the summer male. Immatures are similar, but with pink wing-linings and less prominent streaks and usually a pinkish-buff hue on the throat and breast. At one year of age—in their first breeding season—males are scaly above like fully adult males in winter plumage, and still retain the immature's browner wings. Unlike males, females can easily be confused with the black-headed grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus) where their ranges overlap in the central United States and south-central Canada. The rose-breasted grosbeak female has slightly darker brown markings on the underside, paler rather yellowish streaking on both the head and wings and paler, pinkish (rather than bi-colored) bill when compared to the female black-headed grosbeak. A potential confusion species also is the female purple finch (Haemorhous purpureus), but that species is noticeably smaller with a less robust bill and a notched tail.
Uploaded
January 9th, 2018
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