My family moved to Milton, Ontario just before I started grade one. Directly in front of the picture window facing the street in our new house was a magnificent Flowering Crabapple tree. I remember its beautiful blooms in the spring and prolific berry production in the summer. We hung a bird feeder in that tree, which became my responsibility to look after by the time I was 8.

The feeder attracted a nice assortment of birds, my favourite of which was the Purple Finch. Each winter, a flock of exotic — really tropical-looking — heavy beaked, apparently ravenous birds would descend on the tree by the dozens, and within a matter of hours, or at most a few days, they would strip it of its fruit, leaving a carpet of pulp beneath the tree. Even if I wasn’t at home to witness their visit, I could tell if the Grosbeaks had dropped by through the tell-tale berry residue beneath the tree. Their way of eating berries, by chewing and pulverizing them with their strong jaws, contrasted with the other species of flocking berry-eater that also loved the crab apples – the Cedar Waxwing. Waxwings swallowed the big berries whole. In some winters the question was “Who would get there first?”— though the Grosbeaks never left anything behind whereas Waxwings always left some berries hanging.

Evening Grosbeak (Photo: Ted Cheskey)

Decline of the Grosbeak

As much as Cedar Waxwing is the epitome of elegance in the bird world, the male Evening Grosbeak is outlandishly spectacular, with a massive, oversized, seed-crushing beak, bold markings of gold, black and white, and an acrobatic flair for hanging upside-down at times to reach a berry with its bill. Female Grosbeaks lack the bold black-and-gold patterns but possess bills that are every bit as impressive as the males’.

By the time I finished high school in the mid 1970s, the Evening Grosbeak was no longer an annual visitor to our Flowering Crabapple tree and within a few years, the bird seemed to have largely disappeared from Southern Ontario. Decades later, in 2016, the Evening Grosbeak was recognized as a Species at Risk by COSEWIC, meriting “Special Concern” Status. Its population had declined by 77% to 90% since 1970, when I would have started noticing fewer of them.

Evening Grosbeak breeds across the boreal forest from Newfoundland to British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. It breeds in mature mixed forests where White Spruce is dominant. Grosbeaks also love eating Manitoba Maple seeds and seem to have a special relationship with that tree species, whose weedy nature makes it almost as wide a wanderer as the Evening Grosbeak. In French the species is called “le grosbec errant” which literally means “the wandering Grosbeak.” This is probably a much more accurate and descriptive name than the English one, as the species has an ability to move great distances — hundreds, perhaps even thousands of kilometres when the local seed crop fails — to find what they need. Who knows where the guys that came to our yard in Milton came from?

The widespread use of pesticides in forests managed for logging, in particular control of the Spruce Budworm, is thought to be one of the contributing factors to this species decline. In a well-known paper published in the Journal of Forestry in 1984, authors John Y. Takekawa and Edward O. Garton¹ calculated the monetary value of Spruce Budworm predation by Evening Grosbeaks as an equivalent of the costs of using pesticides to achieve similar results. In one square kilometre the value would have been $1820/year in Oregon forests. One bird eats 10,000 to 15,000 caterpillars per summer!

Helping the Grosbeak

There are things we can do to help this species. Personally, it starts by making our yards and feeders safe. Follow best practices in maintaining your feeding stations disease-free. Make sure that associated threats like windows and outdoor cats are mitigated. The Evening Grosbeak is a common victim of window collisions. Collectively we need to think of this species as an indicator of forest health. The heavy reliance of the logging industry on pesticides is not sustainable and needs to change. Also, loss of habitat and disturbance from logging operations must be a factor contributing to declines. Making those changes is difficult and requires societal pressure on industry actors as well as government regulators to reduce and eliminate pesticide reliance in forestry, just as in agriculture, and minimize other forestry activities that threaten nesting birds. There has been some better news recently. Budworm populations have been at outbreak levels in parts of Eastern Canada for several years, which clearly benefits Evening Grosbeak productivity as their numbers appear to be up.

In southern Canada this winter, watch and listen for the beloved Evening Grosbeaks. They will brighten your day, without any doubt.

Want to help Canadian species like the Evening Grosbeak and more? Stay tuned with the latest in Canadian nature by subscribing for email updates. You’ll receive regular updates about what we’re doing to protect Canadian nature and how you can help.

¹ John Y. Takekawa, Edward O. Garton, Journal of Forestry, Volume 82, Issue 7, July 1984, Pages 426–428, https://doi.org/10.1093/jof/82.7.426