Pheucticus ludovicianus
Order Passeriformes
Family Cardinalidae
♂ Adult male.– Head, throat, upper back, wings, and tail black; wings and tail much spotted with white; lower back white; breast rose-red, a stripe of this color often extending down the white belly, and a salmon tinge under the wings; bill large, white when seen from below.
♀ Adult female.– The black of the male replaced by brown; back and breast streaked; bar across the wing and line over eye, white; line through crown white, streaked with brown; bill large, light colored.
♂ Adult male late summer and fall.– Head brown; line above eye whitish; back brown; rump whitish; breast pink, veiled with buff; wings and tail jet-black and white.
♀ Immature female.– Similar to adult female in late summer, but pink not so extensive; wings and tail brown.
Nest, of twigs, loosely constructed, from five to twenty-five feet up in bush or tree.
Eggs, pale blue, with numerous brown markings.
The Rose-breasted Grosbeak is a summer resident throughout New York and New England, common in some regions, but rare in others, for instance on Long Island. It is said not to occur on Cape Cod, and in the upland of northern New England, though found even high up on the mountains, it is nowhere common. It arrives in May, and remains into September. Of late years it has shown a preference for villages, and even for city streets, if well shaded; it also occurs in orchards, but apparently its natural habitat is a growth of young trees or saplings, particularly in low ground. In midsummer it is often seen in potato fields, collecting the slugs of the potato-beetle to carry to its young.
The song of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak is a fine, powerful warble, with some of the cadence of the Robin’s song, though faster; a “glorified Robin,” Burroughs has called it. Its alarm-note is a sharp, metallic click. The female looks like an overgrown sparrow, may readily be told by her large bill, the white line over her eye, and the white on the wing. As the male flies, he shows a ring of white, formed by the white in his wing.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)