Readers’ wildlife photos

Susan Harrison of UC Davis reappears today with some photos and lessons about grosbeaks. Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

Grosbeaks: a tale of convergent evolution

Evening Grosbeaks (Coccothraustes vespertinus) are among the birds that make me the happiest to see.  These dashing, brilliantly colored, sociable seed-feeders live in conifer forests across much of the U.S. and southern Canada, but are not common nor predictable anywhere.  This spring they are unusually abundant around Ashland, Oregon.  In two instances, after the Merlin app alerted me to their “pew! pew!” calls, I located a flock of around 25 birds busily feeding in a tree and then swooping en masse to another tree.

Evening Grosbeaks of both sexes devouring elm seeds (possibly European white elm, Ulmus laevis) in North Mountain Park, Ashland, May 2025:

Black-headed Grosbeaks (Pheuticus melanocephalus) are also delightful to see and hear, and are far more common in their western U.S. range than Evening Grosbeaks.  The Black-headed Grosbeak’s solitary lifestyle and elaborate, ringing song are quite a contrast with the Evening Grosbeak’s gregariousness and unusual lack of any song.

Black-headed Grosbeak adult male (Davis, California), female enduring a storm in Frenchglen, Oregon, and immature feeding on a fruit tree in Ashland:

“Grosbeak” turns out to be a name early ornithologists gave to several distantly related bird lineages that evolved the same handy trait:  an extra-large beak enabling them to crush seeds too large for most other songbirds.  Such a group, united by a shared adaptation rather than by shared ancestry, is called a “form taxon” according to the informative Wikipedia article on grosbeaks.

Evening grosbeaks are in the Finch family (Fringillidae) along with 12 other living grosbeak species.  It’s not surprising, then, that they fly around in talkative flocks like House Finches (Haemorhous mexicanus). Pine Grosbeaks (Pinicola enucleator) are another “finch grosbeak,” found in northerly parts of both the Old and New Worlds. Finch grosbeaks also include Old World birds called grosbeak-goldfinches and grosbeak-canaries, and an extinct member of the lamentably vanishing Hawaiian honeycreepers.

Pine Grosbeak female and male (Finland):

Black-headed Grosbeaks are in the Cardinal family (Cardinalidae) together with 16 other grosbeaks.  Rose-breasted Grosbeaks (Pheucticus ludovicianus) are their east-of-Rockies close relative.  Black-headed and Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks are nearly identical as females or young, while the mature males could hardly look more different.  Explain that, you developmental biologists!

Rose-breasted Grosbeak male (Texas):

Blue Grosbeaks (Passerina caerulea) are another “cardinal grosbeak”, breeding in the southern half of the U.S. including the riparian forests near my Davis, California home.  They are right up there with Evening Grosbeaks for causing me to jump with joy on the rare occasions of seeing them.

Blue Grosbeak male, Arizona:

Now you’ve seen all the Grosbeak species I’ve seen, but there are plenty more of these big-beaked beauties in Asia, Africa, and Central and South America.