Grosbeaks' Beaks

BirdNote^®

Grosbeaks’ Beaks—
What is a grosbeak?

Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote!
 Watching at the edge of a shallow pool this May day in the West, we see two birds bathing. One is stocky, the size of a starling, feathered orange with a black head and a large, thick bill. [Black-headed Grosbeak song]
 The other, about the same size, is brown set off by vivid yellow. It also has a conspicuously large and conical bill. [Evening Grosbeak trills]
  Let’s look them up in our bird guide. Here’s the first. It’s a Black-headed Grosbeak.  [Black-headed Grosbeak song] But where’s the second? There must be some mistake. Wait, here it is – it’s an Evening Grosbeak – but it’s not described until nearly the book’s end! [Evening Grosbeak trills]
 That’s because, the Black-headed and Evening Grosbeaks belong to entirely different families of birds. Both groups evolved oversized bills for opening tough seeds. The Black-headed Grosbeak is closely related to the cardinal, [A few Northern Cardinal notes] while the Evening Grosbeak is close kin to the goldfinch [American Goldfinch flight call].
 The common name they share, “grosbeak,” means large beak or bill. And the common names were in use long before science began sorting the birds into their genetic affinities.
 [Black-headed Grosbeak song]
 For BirdNote, I’m Frank Corrado.
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Bird audio provided by The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.  Black-headed Grosbeak song and single trill of Evening Grosbeak recorded by T.G. Sander.  Northern Cardinal call recorded by G.A. Keller.  American Goldfinch recorded by D.A. Sibley. 
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2010 Tune In to Nature.org           May 2010

ID# 2008-05-29-grosbeak-01-KPLU           grosbeak-01