Jan 2, 2008

Lifebird #33 - Red-breasted Beauty

The first Rose-breasted Grosbeak I saw was a female at our feeders. Joann and I were mere fledgling birders at the time, and it took us awhile to identify her. She looked to us a little bit like a large sparrow with a big ugly beak. A gross beak.

But we did manage to figure it out, and were happy to check off the species in our field guide. But we knew we wouldn’t feel we’d really seen a Rose-breasted Grosbeak until we saw a male. This sounds sexist, and I suppose it is. But the female doesn’t have a rosy breast. She is dully colored (all the better to hide on a nest) and doesn’t sing. She looks like a large sparrow with a big ugly beak.

It was a little more than two years later, on the Fourth of July 2006 at the Old Cedar Bridge in Bloomington when I saw my first brightly-colored male Red-breasted Grosbeak. By 2008 I felt I was by then a mature birder, and at the Old Cedar Bridge again—on an Audubon Society walk led by our friends Paul S and Sally H—I found a male and excitedly pointed it out the group, stage whispering (OK, yelling) “grose-bested roast beef!” Joann must’ve been so proud of my skillz.