The Enchanting Evening Grosbeak

We do not look for evening grosbeaks at our feeders anymore. People still ask me once in a while why there are no more noisy, greedy flocks of these beautiful finches coming to overwhelm the feeding station. I have a photograph of a flock of thirty or more settled on a platform in the back yard, the yellow dress of the males showing brightly against the shining snow.

We lament this absence with mixed feelings, for the seed can be costly if these tame birds come all day and all winter to have their fill of sunflower. You might ask why this talk of winter feeding here in the deepest part of summer, when young birds are finally on the wing and evening comes late and its dark departs early?

Evening grosbeaks were originally a western bird in North America, first found in upper Michigan and not recorded in Massachusetts at all until 1890. Since then until about 1975, flocks of grosbeaks winged their way east during most winters, sometimes in huge numbers. However, a few of these birds liked our green hills when spring came, and did not return to the west.

Birders like to visit these hilly places in the summer to find birds that do not nest in the valleys where most of us live. A few years ago one such valley dweller decided to move to the hills and bought a large farm in Plainfield, now grown to a spruce-fir-maple forest. The bird club visits her every July and walks the trails past the ponds and through the deep woods and back to the old farmhouse that has been restored to new beauty.

On the way we enjoyed the typical species of the New England forest, magnolia and blackburnian warblers, sapsuckers and hummingbirds, hermit thrushes and scarlet tanagers, nearly sixty species in all. There even was a sharp-shinned hawk pursued by a brave songbird trying to protect its young from this rare, bird-eating raptor.

We also came upon a family of evening grosbeaks. We had heard the shrill cry somewhere in the treetops and eventually a male came into good view with two or three others lurking back in the thick boughs. This onetime winter visitor is now a rare year-round resident of the hill towns. Only there do they bring their young to the summer feeder, then flock together in larger groups in winter to monopolize the sunflower.

They did not come to the tiny feeder at the farmhouse where a dozen of us snacked on the porch. Instead, we watched a different grosbeak munching away with little fear. This was the rose-breasted grosbeak, which is really a sparrow and now comes to feeders throughout the region when they first arrive from the south in May, and sometimes all summer. Meanwhile the evening grosbeaks that used to visit from the west have discovered the South and Midwest, where there are enough feeders to keep them fed and content before they ever reach the east coast.

The name of this bird is of some interest, for it might very well be rooted in error. 'Evening' is one meaning of its Latin name, vespertinus, but it can also mean the west, where the sun sets in the evening. If it had been named for its original range, then western grosbeak would have been appropriate, but evening was used for the English name because it was first heard singing late in the day. We now know that the bird sings and calls all day long and retires to its roost before dusk as most species do.

Its other Latin name is unique and also very appropriate. Coccothraustes means 'shatterer of kernels,' and indeed their thick strong bills perform this task with ease. The evening grosbeak is a highly evolved species, holding a special place as the last and therefore youngest native American species on the scientific checklist of birds. The list begins with our oldest, earliest evolved species, the loon.

From deep diving fish to large hard seeds, birds have evolved to take advantage of every possible kind of food, and they have moved about the entire earth to find such food.