Grosbeaks

Grosbeaks are some of those birds whose name makes a lot more sense once you see one up close. Gros comes from a word meaning large or thick, and the enormous seed-crushing bill certainly fits. Thankfully, there is nothing particularly gross about it.

In fact, these are remarkably pretty birds. Male Black-headed Grosbeaks combine a dark head with glowing orange underparts and flashes of white in the wings. Add that oversized pale bill and you get a bird that is difficult to mistake once you've learned it.

They're also one of my regular sunflower-seed customers. When a Black-headed Grosbeak lands at the feeder, that huge bill suddenly makes perfect sense—it is an impressive tool for cracking into seeds.

And this week's timing makes those feeder visits a little more special. Late summer is your final chance to enjoy many of Utah's Black-headed Grosbeaks before fall migration carries them south. Birds that filled mountain forests and backyards through the breeding season are already beginning to disappear.

Keep an eye on feeders and fruiting trees as local birds prepare to leave and migrants from farther north pass through. If one of those bright orange males drops in this week, enjoy the visit—it may be one of your last until spring.

Like many of the birds we've met this year, Black-headed Grosbeaks show strong sexual dimorphism. The adult male gets the dramatic combination of black, orange, and white, while the female trades those bold blocks of color for brown, buff, and heavy streaking.

At first glance, that can make the female feel like a completely different bird. Look past the color, though, and the family resemblance is sitting right on her face: she still carries that same oversized triangular grosbeak bill.

Females also show a bold face pattern and streaked underparts that help separate them from many other brown songbirds. It is another good reminder that shape and structure can sometimes tell you more than color.

Black-headed Grosbeaks are the familiar member of the trio in Utah. The other two take a little more luck.

Blue Grosbeaks are striking birds, with adult males covered in deep blue and accented by rusty wing bars. In Utah they are primarily birds of the south, although a small breeding population has also been found farther north in Utah County.

Rose-breasted Grosbeaks are rarer still. They're primarily an eastern species, but occasional birds wander through Utah during migration. An adult male is spectacular: black and white with a brilliant red patch across the breast.

We've actually met some of the grosbeaks' closest relatives already this year—we just called them something completely different.

Back in Week 19, we met Lazuli and Indigo Buntings. Then Week 20 brought us Western, Summer, and Scarlet Tanagers. Now we're meeting Black-headed, Blue, and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. Despite the very different names, all three groups belong to the cardinal family.

There's something fitting about meeting them so close together on our calendar, too. These colorful relatives return to Utah around the same general stretch of spring, filling our warmer months with some of the brightest songbirds of the year.

But here's where the names really get strange: an Evening Grosbeak isn't part of that family at all. Neither is a Pine Grosbeak. Both are actually finches—the group we met way back in Week 11.

So a Western Tanager is more closely related to a Black-headed Grosbeak than an Evening Grosbeak is. Grosbeak turns out to describe that enormous bill more than one neat branch of the bird family tree.

Bird names don't always tell the whole story—but after 35 weeks, we're starting to see how some of the pieces fit together.