The Expanded Range of the Blue Grosbeak

Not all sparrows are little brown jobs (LBJs). Many of them share the brown back and lighter undersides that make them look similar to each other and give rise to this nickname. If you allow the seed from your feeder to fall on the ground, or spread it there, you might be challenged to identify the various kinds of sparrows that come to eat.

This time of year, the most likely such visitor is not a sparrow at all, although it has been given the name. The house sparrow is a weaver finch, an abundant bird of Europe and Asia that invaded America over a hundred years ago. It is an aggressive species that will oust bluebirds and tree swallows from nesting boxes, sparing no effort even to pecking their rival to death. A true American patriot would not allow a house sparrow to nest in the yard long. This black-bibbed interloper would be repelled the minute it showed.

One sparrow that will please you is denied the name. The most coveted feeder bird of all is a sparrow, the cardinal. There is no mistaking this bird, at least the male with his bright red coat, black mask and proud crest. He is a redcoat we have welcomed to our New England countryside, not marching from the east after crossing the ocean, but flying from the sunny south.

There is another sparrow that inhabits the southland that is also working its way toward us as the cardinal did forty years ago. This bird also lacks the sparrow name, but shares the same wonderful seed crunching bill of the cardinal. It is called the blue grosbeak, and the male is as striking in his blue coat and black mask as the cardinal is in his red and black.

Unlike the cardinal, the blue grosbeak migrates during cold weather to Mexico and beyond. Some of these migrating birds take a wrong tack each fall and end up on the New England coast. Every year in October, birders travel to Cape Cod to see migrant sparrows, and the blue grosbeak is especially searched for among the brushy fields of the outer cape and islands. Usually, it is a brown immature male, the dull color which shows its kinship to the other sparrows.

In spring, a few migrants overshoot their mark and end up on our coast again, far from the hedgerows of Maryland and Virginia. Sometimes we even find them in western Massachusetts. This species has been found fourteen times here in Spring in the last sixty years, but these birds do not stay, returning back south in a few days when no mate answers the call.

But the bluecoat is coming as the redcoat once did, and this pioneer was first found in Southwick two weeks ago. A first-year male was discovered singing from the small trees of a sand pit, acting as if a mate was expected to hear and be enraptured at any moment. This has happened countless times as eager young birds push north from Virginia and settle in new territory, where the older dominant males are only a memory.

Now the blue grosbeak is well established in southeastern New York, and three summers ago a pair even nested twenty miles away in Windsor, Connecticut. So our first ever June bridegroom presents himself each day at the tops of various trees in the pit and invites a bride to join him in the brushy depths.

If he were mated, the singing would not be so vigorous, and the pair would both be hiding as sparrows always do, on the ground under the low, thick canopy of leaves. One group of birders visiting this enthusiastic young singer, found an adult pair of blue grosbeaks in one part of this huge area, but these two have since kept hidden, tending to their nest.

This immature male sings from a dozen favorite perches and most searchers are content to enjoy an easy look at him, with the two blotches of blue on his chest. Eventually we will all enjoy this pioneering species, perhaps even coming to our feeders alongside its cardinal cousin. Then they will have to share the glory of being not little brown jobs, but the patriotic sparrows, one red and one blue.