My friend Ruthie is becoming a top birder in Bethel. While on a walk with her parents, she spotted a flock of Evening Grosbeaks eating cherries in trees on Mason Street. Ruthie noticed three other birds among the bright yellow Evening Grosbeaks. The birds were the same size as the other grosbeaks but with a cherry colored wash over the head, breast, back and rump. It had white wing bars and gobbled cherries like the other grosbeaks. These birds, in fact were also grosbeaks – Pine Grosbeaks. (Photo by dfaulder).

Pine Grosbeaks are another of a group of birds loosely referred to as winter finches. Like the Evening Grosbeaks, they roam northern forests looking for the food they need to make it through long, dark winters. Pine Grosbeaks tend to stick to boreal forest at higher elevations in our area and further north and are less likely to venture down. That makes a sighting like this fairly rare. So, look out for them in case they are still hanging around.

Don’t confuse them with other similarly colored birds. There are four in our area – House Finch (common in town), Purple Finch (less common but regular) and two types of crossbills (both rare). All of these birds are small, sparrow-sized birds. The Pine Grosbeak is much bigger.

Pine Grosbeaks eat seeds and buds from trees but definitely take advantage of late season fruits when they can find them. The field guides point out that they visit northern villages and eat ornamental crabapples and other late fruits in people’s yards like the ones Ruthie discovered. The other reddish winter finches eat seeds almost exclusively.

There are eight sub-species of Pine Grosbeaks worldwide and five in North America. These are not the details a casual birder needs to know, but given the skills of observation that Ruthie exhibits at only nine years old, I suspect she will soon be telling us which sub-species she’s spotted on Mason Street. Joking aside, thank you Ruthie for alerting us to the Pine Grosbeak sighting. Keep us updated on what you see next.

James Reddoch, of Albany Township and Boston, leads birding events for the Mahoosuc Land Trust. Visit Mahoosuc Land Trust at 162 North Road, Bethel, ME. To learn more visit www.mahoosuc.org. To contact James, send your emails to [email protected].