Author: Norm Budnitz
It was during my teenage years when I first met Evening Grosbeaks. I had been birding for 4 or 5 years, and I had finally convinced my parents that we should put up a bird feeder in the front yard near our old gray birch tree. This was an exciting time because cardinals and titmice, two species from the southeastern United States, had begun to show up in western Massachusetts, and they immediately found our feeder. The titmice were more unusual at the time, but my father was smitten with the cardinals. My parents didn’t mind that I was interested in birds, but those cardinals cemented the deal.
And then it happened. It was the morning after the first real snowfall, the kind that covered every exposed surface. I had gone to bed under leaden gray skies that had begun to drop their white flakes. By the time I woke up the next morning, the clouds were gone, revealing a bright blue sky, and everything was covered with snow—every bush, every tree limb, the yard, the driveway, and the dead-end road we lived on. The world was in a hush.
When I looked out the window, the activity at the bird feeder was just beginning. Black-capped Chickadees, always the first to arrive, were soon joined by their Tufted Titmouse flock mates. White-breasted and Red-breasted Nuthatches soon followed. White-throated and American Tree Sparrows then began poking in the powdery snow, trying to find the sunflower seeds dropped by the other species. A couple of Northern Cardinals came in and flashed their bright plumage in the morning sun. I parked myself by the bathroom window, the best viewpoint in the house, to watch the show.
Suddenly, the white hush exploded in a cacophony of bell ringing and a flurry of yellow, black, and white birds. Not one, not three, more like twenty or thirty. They came into the birch tree and then attacked the bird feeder. I was stunned.
I ran and got my Peterson’s Field Guide to put a name to these birds. There they were, toward the back of the book—Evening Grosbeaks. Several of the birds would sit on the feeder and gorge themselves until they had filled their crops and then fly off. As soon as there was an opening, more of them would come in, gorge themselves, and fly off. And then more and more. Impatient birds would fly to the feeder tray before the others had left, jostling and squawking until they managed to squeeze in. It was chaos and magic all at once.
This went on for several days. I even called a friend of mine who lived nearby to come see them. He was as amazed as I was. Over the next few winters, Evening Grosbeaks appeared again, sometimes in smaller numbers, sometimes in flocks as large as fifty or more. They quickly became one of my favorite birds, not only for their striking plumage but also for their assertive personalities. The sound of their calls, like ringing bells, still echoes in my memory.
Sadly, Evening Grosbeaks have declined dramatically in the decades since those teenage years. In the 1960s and 1970s, they were regular winter visitors across much of the eastern United States. Now, they are far less common, and many younger birders have never had the thrill of seeing a flock descend upon their feeders. Scientists attribute this decline to habitat loss, especially the cutting of spruce and fir forests in Canada, as well as reductions in outbreaks of spruce budworms, one of their key food sources.
When I see one now, it’s a rare treat, a reminder of those snowy mornings of my youth when the world seemed filled with endless possibilities—and with flocks of yellow, black, and white grosbeaks ringing like bells in the birch tree outside my window.
