April 29, 2009 - Two pairs of rose breasted grosbeaks have been seen at our feeders. The males have very distinctive red V patterns on their chests. These two did not look at all like last year's males (perhaps these are the last year's juveniles, who had not yet displayed the red patch).  We need to rethink our new arrangement of using less open trays, as these grosbeaks seem a little too big to be comfortable on most perches.   After all, they are here to eat.

The rose-breasted grosbeak is quite a distinguished and handsome bird. This spring they  arrived late as usual on May 5th and left early on August 14th.

The males make an appearance before the females (who are later still- no surprise to any dating couple).  Our first summer in this home, we were thrilled to be able to easily identify this special bird.  Because he didn't travel or hang out with a female, we didn't even notice the arrival and pairing that must have occurred under our not so watchful eye.

By this summer, we were more knowledgeable with tons of new bird reference books and better camera equipment.  We have found that pictures of yet-to-be-identified birds help greatly in finding the name of a new friend without panicking about  forgetting an important feature.  Placing the seemingly millions of brown streaked song birds with their usually more colorful mates is quite a challenge.  It gets even harder with juveniles vying for attention.

The rose-breasted grosbeak family have a lot of color variations.  The breeding males are the most obvious, but even they differ in the number and pattern of white spots and bars on their backs and wings.  Their red chest triangles vary in size and shape too.  The more red showing, the more desirable he is to a potential mate. 

The female is distinguishable from female finches because of the large beak size (hence the name grosbeak) and the yellow underwings.

The first-fall male resembles a female, but with buffy head and a buffy to reddish wash on breast.  Underside of male has less streaking and his underwings are pink to red instead of the yellow of the female.

The rose-breasted grosbeaks have enough variation to distinguish one bird from another. Food Guy loves to name individual birds, so we'll see if  Wilma and Willis and kids return next spring.