Pine Grosbeak

About the Pine Grosbeak

The Pine Grosbeak is a bird that has almost no business in Texas at all - a big, plush finch of the boreal spruce forests of Canada and the high Rockies, and one of the rarest birds a Texas lister can ever hope to add. State records can practically be counted on one hand.

The bird photographed here was part of the historic winter finch flight of 2023-24, when failed seed crops in the north pushed grosbeaks farther south than they had wandered in over half a century - the same push that delivered Nebraska its first incursion since the winter of 1969-70. One made it all the way to the Texas Panhandle in December 2023, joining a remarkable run of rarities in the Amarillo area that season, and it drew birders from across the state.

It is the largest of the northern finches, nearly cardinal-sized, with a stubby curved bill built for nipping buds and crushing seeds. Adult males are washed in raspberry-rose over gray; females and young birds trade the red for mustard-gold on the head and rump.

In their far-north home Pine Grosbeaks are famously tame, methodically stripping fruit from a mountain-ash while observers stand a few feet away - a calmness that carries over when one wanders south and becomes the most-photographed bird in a state.