Bird Profile

Black-headed Grosbeak

The West's summer grosbeak: a heavy bicolored bill, a warbling song like a robin in a hurry, and a genuine appetite for sunflower on any surface it can stand on.

The Black-headed Grosbeak is the western counterpart to the Rose-breasted Grosbeak: a stocky, thick-billed songbird about 7 inches (18 cm) long that arrives in spring, sings loudly from the tops of deciduous trees, and comes to feeders for sunflower. The male is burnt orange below with a solid black head and black-and-white wings. The female is brown and cream with a strongly striped face, and she is the bird people call in for identification.

It is a bird of oak woodland, riparian cottonwood and willow, pine-oak canyons, orchards and older suburbs across the West. If your yard has mature deciduous trees within reach of water, you probably have them from May onward whether or not you feed.

This profile covers separating them from the birds they are mistaken for, the arrival and departure schedule that governs when to expect them at a feeder, what they eat through a summer, the feeder setup that works, and the two facts about this species that people find hardest to believe: that the female sings, and that these grosbeaks eat monarch butterflies.

How to identify a Black-headed Grosbeak#

The bill is the group mark. It is very large, conical and two-toned: dark gray or blackish on the upper mandible, pale blue-gray or horn below. Nothing else at a western feeder combines that bill with this body size.

The adult male has a solid black head, a rich orange-cinnamon collar, breast and rump, a yellow belly, and black wings crossed by bold white patches and bars. First-year males look intermediate, with a brown-streaked head and paler underparts, and they can look confusingly female-like well into their first summer.

The female is warm brown above with a strong facial pattern: a whitish crown stripe, a broad white eyebrow, a dark cheek, and a pale stripe below it. Underparts are warm buff to orange-buff, with fine dark streaking limited mostly to the flanks. Both sexes show bright lemon-yellow underwing linings, which flash unmistakably when a bird drops off a feeder.

The song is a rich, fluid warble, frequently described as an American Robin's song sung faster and more smoothly. The call is a sharp, squeaky eek, like a shoe on a gym floor, and it is often the first sign a grosbeak is in the yard.

Confusion species

The female Rose-breasted versus female Black-headed problem is real on the Great Plains, where the two overlap and hybridize. Underwing color settles most cases: yellow for Black-headed, pink or salmon for Rose-breasted. Streaking helps too, since Black-headed females are warmer and much less streaked below.

Where and when Black-headed Grosbeaks appear#

The breeding range runs from southern British Columbia and coastal Alaska's southern edge down through Washington, Oregon, California, the Rockies and the Southwest into Mexico, and east to roughly the western Great Plains. They favor deciduous and mixed woodland with an open structure: cottonwood and willow along streams, oak woodland and foothill canyons, aspen groves, orchards, and leafy older neighborhoods.

They are migratory. Birds arrive at lower elevations across the Southwest and California in April, reach the Pacific Northwest and interior mountains through May, breed through the summer, and head south from late July into September. Most have left the United States by early October, wintering in Mexico.

For a feeder, that gives a clear window. Put sunflower out in April in the southern part of the range, in May farther north, and expect the birds to thin out fast in August. On the Great Plains they meet Rose-breasted Grosbeaks in a narrow contact zone where mixed pairs and intermediate-looking birds occur, so expect ambiguous individuals there.

What Black-headed Grosbeaks eat#

The wild diet is mixed and shifts through the season: beetles, wasps, bees, caterpillars and other insects, spiders and snails, plus seeds and a lot of fruit. In late summer they work berries and cherries heavily, and in orchards they are known for taking soft fruit. Nestlings receive a heavily insect-based diet, which is why an unsprayed yard matters more to breeding success than a full feeder.

The nectar point surprises people. Black-headed Grosbeaks do visit sugar-water feeders, particularly the wide-mouthed oriole feeders that give them somewhere to perch, and they will hang awkwardly on a hummingbird feeder if that is what is available. Keep the mix to the standard four parts water to one part sugar in the nectar recipe, and clean it on schedule in summer heat.

The feeder setup Black-headed Grosbeaks actually use#

At roughly 1.5 oz (43 g) with a broad chest and a heavy head, this is a bird that needs to stand rather than cling.

• A platform or tray feeder is the best single choice, filled with black oil sunflower or hearts.
• A hopper feeder works if the ledge is at least 2 inches (5 cm) deep.
• Tube feeders are a poor fit unless you add a wide bottom tray. Grosbeaks will try a port and give up.
• A fruit spike or a small tray for orange halves and berries, near cover, extends the season into late summer.
• Mount the feeder around 5 to 6 feet (1.5 to 1.8 m) up with leafy cover within a short flight, following the rules in where to hang a feeder.

One practical detail: sunflower hulls pile up fast under a grosbeak feeder in summer, and damp hull litter in warm weather grows mold quickly. Rake it out weekly rather than seasonally, and site the feeder where you can actually reach the ground beneath it.

In hot, dry western summers, water often outperforms seed. A shallow bath, ideally with moving water, brings grosbeaks in when the feeder is quiet; see bird baths and moving water.

Behavior worth knowing#

Both sexes sing. The female's song is generally shorter and simpler than the male's, and females sometimes sing from the nest. Singing females are uncommon among North American songbirds, and it means a warbling grosbeak song is not reliable evidence that you are hearing a male.

Males share incubation, which is also unusual, and they sing while sitting on the eggs. A pair splits both incubation and feeding duties fairly evenly, so both adults will be shuttling between your feeder and the nest through June.

The most remarkable thing about the species happens far from any feeder. In their Mexican wintering grounds, Black-headed Grosbeaks are among the very few birds that feed on overwintering monarch butterflies, whose bodies carry cardenolide toxins from milkweed. The grosbeaks tolerate a dose that deters most predators, and they feed on monarchs in numbers through the winter.

Away from the nest they are not especially aggressive at feeders. A grosbeak displaces smaller birds simply by landing, and disputes are usually settled by one bird leaving. Where several pairs use the same neighborhood you may see three or four at a tray at once in July, when newly independent young start following adults to easy food.

Nesting#

Pairs form soon after arrival. The nest is a loosely built, rather flimsy open cup of twigs, weed stems, rootlets and pine needles, usually placed in the outer branches of a deciduous tree or tall shrub, often near water, at heights that commonly range from about 4 to 25 feet (1 to 8 m). The construction is so loose that eggs are sometimes visible from below.

Clutches are typically 2 to 5 pale blue or green eggs with reddish-brown speckling. Both parents incubate for roughly twelve to fourteen days, both feed the young, and the chicks leave the nest around eleven to twelve days after hatching, before they can fly well. Fledglings spend a couple of weeks in dense cover being fed by the adults.

They do not use nest boxes. The housing you can offer is habitat: mature deciduous trees, dense shrubs, and any riparian or oak vegetation you can protect or plant, as covered in native plants for birds. Because nestlings are fed insects, a yard treated with insecticides supports fewer broods regardless of what is in the feeder; see pesticides and birds.

Population and conservation#

Black-headed Grosbeaks are widespread and common across the West, and continental survey data indicate a broadly stable population. They carry no conservation listing and are not considered a species of concern.

The pressure worth watching is habitat rather than numbers. Riparian woodland, the cottonwood and willow corridors that hold the densest breeding populations in the arid West, is among the most reduced habitat types in the region, lost to water diversion, grazing and development. Oak woodland faces its own pressures. Grosbeaks adapt reasonably well to leafy suburbs, which cushions the effect, but suburban habitat brings cats and windows with it.

Practical steps in a yard are the ordinary ones: keep cats indoors, treat glass from the outside as described in preventing window strikes, skip the insecticides during nesting season, and keep feeders clean through the warm months when seed spoils fast.

A Black-headed Grosbeak setup that works#

• A platform or wide-ledged hopper with black oil sunflower, out from April in the south and May farther north.
• Orange halves or berries on a small tray from midsummer, when fruit interest peaks.
• A shallow bath with moving water, which often draws them better than seed in dry heat.
• Mature deciduous cover or a leafy shrub layer within a short flight of the feeder.
• No insecticides during the nesting months, because the chicks eat insects.
• Feeders cleaned on a summer schedule, since heat and damp seed do not mix.