Wings on the River: The Black-headed Grosbeaks arrive

This bird is a robin-sized finch relative in brilliant orange, yellow, black and white plumage, with a giant seed-cracking bill.

The male’s underside shines orange, with a yellow flame-shape. The wings, tail, and back are inky black with white marks.

The female is quieter-colored, with complex brown-and-yellow patterns. But all grosbeak’s penchant for singing still gives them away.

Across western North America, they herald their May arrival from the tropics with long warbles of variable liquid phrases, like robins — but sweeter, more liquid, more operatic.

Males conduct 10-second nuptial flights, wings and tail fanning to show off the white and black, frantic songs raining down from 100 feet onto their potential mate and their territories of deciduous trees.

Males often find the highest branch, and carol for long minutes. Females sing, too. Into early summer, grosbeaks will keep singing.

Even on the nest — a flimsy-looking, see-through construction thrown together from twigs, stems, even flower heads, low in a deciduous tree — they sing.

I have this memory of standing beneath a typical nest: a loose, thin cup in a white oak. Through the sparse twigs, I saw a male’s bright underside. The large conical bill poked out, moving slightly, quietly releasing a bubbly song.

Baby grosbeaks must hear songs even in the egg.

One scientist, Gary Ritchison, found that fledgling grosbeaks are more likely to orient toward the song of a parent than that of a neighboring bird from another territory. They recognized their parent’s voices, and started fidgeting. Ritchison guessed that by singing, the parents inspire fledglings to make food-begging noises. It helps them find hidden chicks, once they clamber out of the nest at 11 or 12 days old. It’s another couple weeks before they’ll fly.

Meanwhile, their parents stuff them with insects and fruits, which make up 60% of grosbeak’s springtime diet. Pesticide-free habitat is a great asset to insect-loving songbirds like these. So are native plantings, and native fruit-bearing bushes, like elderberry and red osier dogwood.

Like most songbirds, the grosbeak’s song is not inborn. They learn it. Regional dialects are possible. Songs from South America sound different than songs from Oregon. Although, to me, they all resemble honey-smooth, tipsy robins.

They’re one of the few who munch toxic monarch butterflies without ill effect. And they migrate for thousands of miles to get here. And they’re as colorful as sunflowers. But it’s for their songs that I missed them most, in the silence of January.