Rose-breasted grosbeak

Immature male, Honduras

File:Pheucticus ludovicianus - Rose-breasted Grosbeak XC102287.mp3 The rose-breasted grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus), colloquially called "cut-throat" due to its coloration,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> is a large, seed-eating grosbeak in the cardinal family (Cardinalidae). It is primarily a foliage gleaner.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Males have black heads, wings, backs, and tails, and a bright rose colored patch on their white breast. Males and females exhibit marked sexual dimorphism.

Breeding habitat consists of cool-temperate open deciduous woods throughout much of eastern North America, with migration to tropical America in winter. Rose-breasted grosbeaks have an average maximum lifespan of 7.3 years in the wild, and up to 24 years in captivity. Death in the wild is generally due to collision with objects (buildings, cars, etc.) and predation, to eggs, nestlings and adults.

Taxonomy

In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the rose-breasted grosbeak in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Louisiana. He used the French name Le gros-bec de la Louisiane and the Latin Coccothraustes Ludoviciana.<ref name=brisson>Template:Cite book The two stars (**) at the start of the section indicates that Brisson based his description on the examination of a specimen.</ref> Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.<ref name=allen>Template:Cite journal</ref> When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.<ref name=allen/> One of these was the rose-breasted grosbeak. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Loxia ludoviciana and cited Brisson's work.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> This species is now placed in the genus Pheucticus that was introduced by the German naturalist Ludwig Reichenbach in 1850.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=ioc>Template:Cite web</ref> The species is monotypic.<ref name=ioc/>

The genus name Pheucticus is from Ancient Greek φευκτικός - pheuktikós, "shy", from Template:Linktext - pheúgo, "to flee", and the specific ludovicianus is from Neo-Latin and refers to Louisiana.<ref name =job>Template:Cite book</ref>

Description

Immature male

Two males at feeder

Adult birds are Template:Convert long, span Template:Convert across the wings and weigh Template:Convert.<ref>Rose-breasted Grosbeak, All about Birds</ref><ref>CRC Handbook of Avian Body Masses by John B. Dunning Jr. (Editor). CRC Press (1992), Template:ISBN.</ref> Grosbeaks measured during migration in the West Indies averaged Template:Convert, while those banded in Pennsylvania average about Template:Convert.<ref>Faaborg, J. R. and J. W. Terborgh. 1980. Patterns of migration in the West Indies. in Migrant birds in the Neotropics: ecological, behavior, distribution and conservation. (Keast, A. and E. S. Morton, Eds.) Smithson. Inst. Press, Washington, D.C.</ref><ref name= Clench>Clench, M. H. and R. C. Leberman. 1978. Weights of 151 species of Pennsylvania birds analyzed by month, age, and sex. Bull. Carnegie Mus. Nat. Hist. 5.</ref> Very little sexual dimorphism in size is seen; females were found to be marginally smaller in standard measurements, but in some seasons were marginally heavier than males when banded in Pennsylvania.<ref name= Clench/><ref>Godfrey, W. E. 1986. The birds of Canada. Rev. ed. Natl. Mus. Nat. Sci. Ottawa, ON.</ref><ref>Pyle, P. 1997. Identification guide to North American birds. Pt. 1: Columbidae to Ploceidae. Slate Creek Press, Bolinas, CA.</ref> At all ages and in both sexes, the beak is dusky horn-colored, and the feet and eyes are dark.<ref>Template:Cite journal </ref>

The adult male in breeding plumage has a black head, wings, back, and tail, and a bright rose-red patch on its breast; the wings have two white patches and rose-red linings. Its underside and rump are white. Males in nonbreeding plumage have largely white underparts, supercilium, and cheeks. The upperside feathers have brown fringes, and most wing feathers white ones, giving a scaly appearance. The bases of the primary remiges are also white. The coloration renders the adult male rose-breasted grosbeak (even while wintering) unmistakable if seen well.

The adult female has dark grey-brown upperparts – darker on wings and tail – a white supercilium, a buff stripe along the top of the head, and black-streaked white underparts, which except in the center of the belly have a buff tinge. The wing linings are yellowish, and on the upperwing are two white patches like in the summer male. Immatures are similar, but with pink wing-linings and less prominent streaks and usually a pinkish-buff hue on the throat and breast. At one year of age—in their first breeding season—males are scaly above like fully adult males in winter plumage, and still retain the immature's browner wings. Unlike males, females can easily be confused with the black-headed grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus) where their ranges overlap in the central United States and south-central Canada. The rose-breasted grosbeak female has slightly darker brown markings on the underside, paler rather yellowish streaking on both the head and wings and paler, pinkish (rather than bi-colored) bill when compared to the female black-headed grosbeak.<ref>Morlan, J. 1991. Identification of female Rose-breasted and Black-headed grosbeaks. Birding 23:220-223.</ref> A potential confusion species also is the female purple finch (Haemorhous purpureus), but that species is noticeably smaller with a less robust bill and a notched tail.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The song is a subdued mellow warbling, resembling a more refined, sweeter version of the American robin's (Turdus migratorius). Males start singing early, occasionally even when still in winter quarters. The call is a sharp pink or pick, somewhat reminiscent of a woodpecker call.

Distribution and habitat

The rose-breasted grosbeak's breeding habitat is open deciduous woods across most of Canada and the northeastern United States. In particular, the northern birds migrate south through the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, to winter from central-southern Mexico through Central America and the Caribbean to Peru and Venezuela. The southern limit of its wintering range is not well known; it was, for example, only recorded in the Serranía de las Quinchas (Colombia) in the 1990s. In winter, they prefer more open woodland, or similar habitat with a loose growth of trees, such as forest edges, parks, gardens, and plantations, ranging from sea level into the hills, e.g. up to Template:Convert above mean sea level in Costa Rica.<ref>Olson et al. (1981), Stiles & Skutch (1989), Hilty (2003)</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal </ref> Since 1966 the rose-breasted grosbeak has experienced a greater than 1.5% yearly decline in population throughout the eastern part of its summer range, but a coincident >1.5% yearly increase in western parts of its summer range.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Migration

The first birds leave the breeding grounds as early as August, while the last ones do not return until mid-late May. In general, however, they migrate south in late September or in October, and return in late April or early May. It appears as if they remain on their breeding grounds longer today than they did in the early 20th century, when migrants were more commonly seen in May and August than in April or September. The rose-breasted grosbeak occurs as a very rare vagrant in western Europe.<ref>Henninger (1906), OOS (2004)</ref> During breeding it is fairly territorial; in winter, it roams the lands in groups of about a handful of birds, and sometimes in larger flocks of a dozen or more.

Behaviour and ecology

Breeding

Rose-breasted grosbeaks were the only one of 70 migratory songbird species in the eastern United States shown in males to have produced sperm while still far south of their breeding location.<ref>Quay, W. B. 1985. Cloacal sperm in spring migrants: occurrence and interpretation. Condor 87:273–280.</ref> Male grosbeaks tend to arrive a few days to a week before the females and pair formation apparently occurs on the breeding grounds.<ref>Dunham, D. W. 1966. Territorial and sexual behavior in the Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Pheucticus ludovicianus. Z. Tierpsychol. 23:438–451.</ref> Nest building begins from as early as early May in Tennessee to as late as early June further north in Saskatchewan.<ref>Nicholson, C. P. 1997. Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Pages 325–327 in Atlas of the breeding birds of Tennessee. (Nicholson, C. P., Ed.) Univ. of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.</ref><ref>Macoun, J., and J. M. Macoun. 1909. Catalogue of Canadian birds. Dep. Mines, Geol. Surv. Branch, Ottawa, ON.</ref> Egg laying may occur anytime from mid-May to mid-July, as has been recorded in Quebec.<ref>Pelletier, R., and D. Dauphin. 1996. Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Pages 954–957 in The breeding birds of Quebec: atlas of the breeding birds of southern Québec. (Gauthier, J., and Y. Aubry, Eds.) Assoc. québecoise des groupes d'ornithologues, Prov. of Quebec Soc. for the protection of birds, Can. Wildl. Serv., Environ. Canada, Québec Region, Montréal.</ref> Usually only a single brood is laid by these grosbeaks each summer but second broods are suspected in Canada and confirmed in semi-captivity.<ref name= Watts>Watts, G. E. 1935. Life history of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Hedymeles ludoviciana). Master's Thesis. Cornell Univ. Ithaca, NY.</ref><ref name= Peck>Peck, G. K., and R. D. James. 1998. Breeding birds of Ontario: nidiology and distribution: passerines (1st rev.-pt. C: tanagers to Old World sparrows). Ont. Birds 16:111–127.</ref> Both the male and the female apparently participate in selecting and building the nest, which is on a tree branch, over vines or any elevated woody vegetation.<ref>Roberts, T. S. 1932. The birds of Minnesota. Univ. of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.</ref> Nests have been recorded at Template:Convert off the ground, averaging Template:Convert high, almost always in the vicinity of openings in woodlands.<ref name= Scott>Scott, D. M. 1998. Laying hours and other nesting data of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. Ont. Birds 16:88–93.</ref> Nests are typical of many passerines in both construct, material and size, made from leaves, twigs, rootlets or hair.<ref>Baicich, P. J., and C. J. O. Harrison. 1997. A guide to the nests, eggs, and nestlings of North American birds. 2nd ed. Academic Press, San Diego, CA.</ref> Clutches are from 1 to 5 eggs, normally being 3–4, being pale blue to green with purplish to brownish red spotting.<ref>Best, L. B., and D. F. Stauffer. 1980. Factors affecting nesting success in riparian bird communities. Condor 82:149–157.</ref> Males do a third of the incubation roughly, the female doing the remaining amount, and incubation can last from 11 to 14 days.<ref name= Peck/> Nestlings are Template:Convert at hatching and after 3–6 days of age, they gain at least Template:Convert each day.<ref name= Watts/> The young grosbeaks typically fledge at 9–13 days of age and are independent of their parents after approximately 3 weeks.<ref name= Watts/><ref name= Scott/>

Longevity and mortality

Maximum lifespan recorded for a wild rose-breasted grosbeak was 12 years, 11 months.<ref>Klimkiewicz, M. K. and A. G. Futcher. 1987. Longevity records of North American birds: Coerbinae through Estrildidae. J. Field Ornithol. 58:318-333.</ref> Captive grosbeaks have been recorded living up to 24 years of age, making them quite a long-living passerine excluding the pressures of surviving in the wild.<ref>Bent, A. C. 1968. "Life histories of North American cardinals, grosbeaks, buntings, towhees, finches, sparrows and allies: Order Passeriformes, Family Fringillidae". U.S. Nat. Mus. Bull. 237.</ref> Although frequently targeted by the brood parasite, the brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater), the rose-breasted grosbeak is apparently able to recognize cowbird eggs and has been seen to aggressively displace cowbirds near the nest.<ref>Friesen, L. E., M. D. Cadman, and R. J. Mackay. 1999. "Nesting success of Neotropical migrant songbirds in a highly fragmented landscape". Conserv. Biol. 13:338-346.</ref> Typically, fewer than 7% of grosbeak nests have cowbird eggs per one study.<ref>Terrill, L. M. 1961. Cowbird hosts in southern Quebec. Can. Field-Nat. 75:2-11.</ref> Per the U.S. Bird Banding Laboratory, as of 1997, rose-breasted grosbeaks recovered when dead have largely collided with objects, including buildings and cars (17.2%) or had been shot (10%; mostly before 1960), 3.6% of the fatalities were caught by cats, 0.8% caught by dogs. Mortality due to natural causes, including disease, natural predators and inclement weather go largely unreported.<ref name="Wyatt">Wyatt, Valerie E. and Charles M. Francis. 2002. Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus). The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: [1].</ref> It is known the main cause of nesting failure is predation. Natural predators of eggs and nestlings include blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata), common grackles (Quiscalus quiscula), raccoons (Procyon lotor), gray (Sciurus carolinensis) and red (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) squirrels.<ref name= Wyatt/><ref>Baird, J. 1964. Hostile displays of Rose-breasted Grosbeak towards a red squirrel. Wilson Bull. 76:286-289.</ref> Confirmed predators of adults include both Cooper's (Accipiter cooperii)<ref>Meng, H. (1959). Food habits of nesting Cooper's Hawks and Goshawks in New York and Pennsylvania. The Wilson Bulletin. 169–174.</ref> and sharp-shinned hawks (Accipiter striatus)<ref>Ivor, H. R. 1944. Bird study and semi-captive birds: the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. The Wilson Bulletin 56:91-104.</ref> as well as northern harriers (Circus cyaenus),<ref>Barnard, P., MacWhirter, B., Simmons, R., Hansen, G. L., & Smith, P. C. (1987). Timing of breeding and the seasonal importance of passerine prey to northern Harriers (Circus cyaneus). Canadian Journal of Zoology, 65(8), 1942-1946.</ref> eastern screech-owls (Megascops asio)<ref>VanCamp, L. F., & Henny, C. J. (1975). The screech owl: its life history and population ecology in northern Ohio. North American Fauna, 1-65.</ref> and short-eared owls (Asio flammeus).<ref>Holt, D. W. (1993). Breeding season diet of Short-eared Owls in Massachusetts. The Wilson Bulletin, 490–496.</ref>

Diet

The rose-breasted grosbeak forages in shrubs or trees for insects, seeds and berries, also catching insects in flight and occasionally eating nectar. It usually keeps to the treetops, and only rarely can be seen on the ground. In the winter quarters, they can be attracted into parks, gardens, and possibly even to bird feeders by fruit like Trophis racemosa. They also survive on blackberries, mulberries, seeds of smartweed, pigweed, raspberries, and milkweed, in addition to sunflower seeds, garden peas, oats, wheat, tree blossoms, tree buds, and developed natural product. Other notable winter food includes jacaranda seeds and the fruits of the introduced busy Lizzy (Impatiens walleriana).<ref>*Template:Cite journal </ref> In grosbeaks from the north-central United States and southern Canada, 52% of the stomach contents were comprised by invertebrates, predominantly beetles; 19.3% was made up of wild fruits; 15.7% by weed seeds; 6.5% by cultivated fruits and plants, including peas, corn (Zea mays), oats (Avena sativa) and wheat (Triticum vulgare); and the remaining 6.5% by other plant material, including tree buds and flowers.<ref>Mcatee, W. L. 1908. Food habits of the grosbeaks. U.S. Dep. Agric. Biol. Surv. Bull. 32.</ref>

Status

Fires are necessary to maintain many kinds of grassland (see Fire ecology). Fire suppression in the late-20th century allowed forests to spread on the Great Plains into areas where recurring fires would otherwise have maintained grassland. This allowed hybridization with the black-headed grosbeak subspecies P. melanocephalus papago.<ref>palpago is a lapsus in Rhymer & Simberloff (1996).</ref> Range expansions also seem to have occurred elsewhere, for example in northern Ohio, where it bred rarely if at all in the 1900s (decade), but it is by no means an uncommon breeder today. In general, though it requires mature woodland to breed and is occasionally caught as a cage bird, the rose-breasted grosbeak is not at all rare, and not considered a threatened species by the IUCN.<ref name="iucn status 12 November 2021" /><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Ohio Ornithological Society (OOS) (2004): Annotated Ohio state checklist Template:Webarchive.</ref> Its average maximum lifespan in the wild is 7.3 years.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

External links

• Rose-breasted Grosbeak Species Account - Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• Rose-breasted Grosbeak - Pheucticus ludovicianus - USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter
• Rose-breasted Grosbeak eNature.com
• Template:Usurped (for Barbuda, Cuba, El Salvador, Grenada, Grenadines of Grenada, United States) with RangeMap at bird-stamps.org
• Template:InternetBirdCollection
• Template:VIREO