Blue Grosbeak

Blue Grosbeak
The male Blue Grosbeak is a brilliant blue, with blackish wings and chestnut wing bars. The female is a brown with buff wing bars. Both have the dark thick conical bills that are typical to grosbeaks.The male color is similar to an Indigo Bunting, but the Indigo is not as husky and lacks the wing bars and of course the songs are very dissimilar. The Blue Grosbeak's song is a sweet warble similar to a Robin but the notes are more purer and more melodious. The male uses this song to defend the nesting territory.

The breeding habitat consists of brushy roadside thickets and wet overgrown pasturelands as well as open woodlands in the southern half of the United States. Over the last few decades this bird has been expanding its territory northward. Along the Atlantic seaboard they can be found as far north as New Jersey. The bird winters from Mexico to Panama but also in the Bahamas and Cuba.
Blue Grosbeak Range Map

The clutch consists of 3 or 4 pale blue eggs placed in a cup of grass stems and twigs and lined with fine rootlets, grass or hair and concealed near the ground in a clump of weeds or vine tangle or tree. The female incubates the eggs for 11 to 12 days and the young fly about 9 or 10 days later. The male may feed the female while she incubates and while the female does most of the feeding of the hatchling the male may feed the young especially if the female starts a second brood. Their nests are commonly parasitized by the Brown-headed Cowbird.

The diet consists mostly of insects and seeds gleaned from the ground but some fruit may round out the diet. Flocks are formed after breeding and the birds sometimes feed in grainfields or grasslands before migration.