Length: A little over 8 inches.

General Appearance: A black and white bird, with a rose-colored breast and heavy, flesh-colored beak.

Male: Head, throat, and back black; rump and under parts white, except on breast and under wings, which are a beautiful rose-red; wings black, with bars and patches of white; tail black; outer feathers with white tips to their inner webs. The winter plumage is slightly different from the summer plumage.

Female: A soft grayish-brown, streaked with white, buff, and gray; under parts light buff, faintly streaked with brown; head brown; a buff streak through center of the crown, a white streak over the eye; wings and tail grayish-brown, some of the wing-feathers tipped with white; yellow under wings instead of rose.

Note: A sharp tsick, tsick.

Song: A rich, beautiful warble, somewhat like that of the robin and tanager, but more joyous than either. It possesses a purer, more liquid quality. The song is remarkable, also, in that it may be heard at night, and at midday.

Habitat: Woodlands and thickets, fields and gardens. This grosbeak frequents also the shade trees of large estates and suburban streets.

Nest: Large and loosely constructed, made of twigs, grasses, and root-fibers, and placed from five to twenty feet from the ground.

Eggs: Pale blue, spotted with brown or purple. The male takes his turn at sitting on the eggs.

Range: Eastern North America and northern South America. Breeds from southern Canada south to Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, New Jersey, and in the mountains of northern Georgia; winters from southern Mexico to Colombia and Ecuador.

So beautiful is the rose-breasted grosbeak and so melodious his song that he invariably attracts attention. Upon close acquaintance, he reveals many interesting habits and delightful traits. He is so useful that he reminds one of the occasional rare person who combines practical qualities with beauty of form and face and unusual gifts.

He is one of our most beneficial birds. Occasionally he partakes of cultivated fruit and devours green peas, but the slight mischief he is guilty of is greatly overbalanced by the good he does. So fond is he of the Colorado potato beetle that in some localities he is called the “potato-bug bird.”[109] Professor Beal tells of watching grosbeaks near a potato-patch that was nearly riddled by these destructive insects. He saw the parent-birds visit the field repeatedly, and then bring their young when able to fly. The brood perched in a row on the top rail of the fence, and were fed so frequently that in a few days the potato-bugs had entirely disappeared. The crop was saved.

Grosbeaks appear to lead unusually happy domestic lives. Though the males fight for their mates, they guard them and their young with great devotion. They not only utter low sweet notes to the mother-bird as she broods, but quite frequently take her place on the nest.

My sister tells of hearing a rose-breast’s song in a maple grove, and of searching diligently for the singer. She located the tree from which the sound proceeded, and waited patiently to see him “gaily flit from bough to bough”; but no bird came into view. She went around the tree until, to her delight, she discovered him sitting on the nest, only a few feet from where she stood. He stopped singing when he saw her, but showed neither surprise nor fear, and resumed his song after she went away. She realized that she had had an unusually rare privilege.

To hear a grosbeak’s song at night is an experience similar to that of listening to a nightingale in Europe, or to a mockingbird in our South or West, singing by moonlight.