I just saw both a male and a female rose-breasted grosbeak at my suet feeder. I've identified males in the past; I've seen them a few times in my life, but not often, so this was fun. The male was hopping around the tree overhead, and then landed on the feeder, took a bit, and ascended again up into the tree. The female was spending quite a bit of time just sitting there eating, and I thought she was a sparrow. But the more I looked the more something in my head told me something about her was a little off...was she a different kind of sparrow? Or, wait, maybe a female house finch? --yes, I thought she was a house finch, because her beak was so heavy.
I flipped through my Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds, looking at the sparrows, trying to figure out which one she might be, when I accidentally flipped to the rose breasted grosbeak. And I realized the female grosbeak is what I'd been looking at. Duh!
Yet another reason I'm going to feel bad about losing that red maple, from which the feeder hangs. It's mostly dead. I just got an estimate on cutting it down. Deciding what to replace it with is difficult, and won't pay off for years and years.
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