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about 8 inches long — placidly cracking sunflower seeds. It was certainly a grosbeak; his seed-cracking equipment was formidable. It was like a Cardinal’s, another kind of grosbeak.
Superficially, the bird did look like a female Rose-breasted Grosbeak but something was not quite right. There was too much color on the bird’s breast, a curious and beautiful shade of yellowish brown. There were also no streaks on the breast which I remember on the female Rose-breasted Grosbeaks.
I opened Peterson’s “A Field Guide to the Birds” to the color plate of grosbeaks. The bird cracking sunflower seeds on the feeding tray looked like Peterson’s painting of a Black-headed Grosbeak female, but not quite. Next, I searched out my copy of National Geographic’s “A Field Guide to the Birds of North America,” turned to the grosbeak page and there I saw the bird: a male Black-headed Grosbeak in winter plumage!
Peterson describes the summer, or breeding, range of this bird as, “Sw Canada, w. U.S. to 8. Mexico.” The bird is not supposed to be here at any time: summer, winter or during migration.
“Birds do fly,” I said to Lee. “Also, they don’t read books about where they are supposed to be.”
The grosbeak suddenly flew into the privet shrub from which most birds launch themselves toward the feeder. The grosbeak was reversing the pattern.
I felt compelled to share this unusual sighting.
“Let’s call Yulee,” I said to Lee.
Yulee Lamer of Staunton is an authority on the distribution of birds of Virginia; she had compiled several publica
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