This Yellow, Black and White Bird is Worth Seeing

This morning I heard a song of a large finch called an Evening Grosbeak. I learned that gros means big and all grosbeaks have a pretty big beak. There were 21 Evening Grosbeaks in our tree singing like crazy. Evening Grosbeaks make me joyful because of their sun-shinny yellow feathers. I get ecstatic when I hear Evening Grosbeak because I don’t know many bird songs except chickadees, crows, song sparrows, robins and flickers. If you know what a starling sounds like, Evening Grosbeaks sound like that but, if you don’t, they’re sort of squeaky.

If you have Evening Grosbeaks and have never seen them before this is what they look like. Evening Grosbeak males have a yellow supercilium, belly, and yellowish parts on top of the wing. They have a black tail, head, and wingtips with a large white patch on each of their wings. The females look totally different! They have a grayish-olive body, a black tail, a black line on the bottom of their wing and some white patches on their wing. I made some watercolors to show you what they look like.

                                                 Observations

• The Evening Grosbeaks were using their conical beaks to break open seeds.
• They come in very large and very noisy flocks.
• The males are easier to identify because they’re really bright but I also can identify the females really easily because l have seen them so many times!
• Even though we’re not in the eastern area I’ve seen only eastern females.