Backyard Cutie
We have a pair of Black-headed Grosbeaks visiting this season. The female shown here is always a sweetheart at the feeder, politely standing by awaiting her turn.
(Nikon 300/2.8 + TC 2.0, 1/320 sec @ f/8, ISO 400)
Black-headed Grosbeaks' massive bills make them well equipped for cracking seeds, but those beaks are just as useful for snatching and crushing hard-bodied insects or snails. Insects (especially beetles), spiders, and other animals make up about 60% of their breeding-season food. Fruits and seeds make up most of the rest. Berries are a favored food during migration. Among wild fruit, juneberries, poison oak, and elderberries make common meals. Other regular foods include grains like oats and wheat, and weed seeds such as dock, pigweed, chickweed, and bur clover. They also feed on cultivated orchard fruit like figs, mulberries, cherries, apricots, plums, blackberries, and crabapples. In spring and summer, they feed at sunflower seed feeders and at nectar feeders set out for orioles. Where their range overlaps with wintering monarch butterflies, grosbeaks eat large numbers of these insects. Black-headed Grosbeaks don’t seem to suffer from the toxins concentrated in the monarchs’ bodies, which render them inedible to most birds.
Backyard Cutie
We have a pair of Black-headed Grosbeaks visiting this season. The female shown here is always a sweetheart at the feeder, politely standing by awaiting her turn.
(Nikon 300/2.8 + TC 2.0, 1/320 sec @ f/8, ISO 400)
Black-headed Grosbeaks' massive bills make them well equipped for cracking seeds, but those beaks are just as useful for snatching and crushing hard-bodied insects or snails. Insects (especially beetles), spiders, and other animals make up about 60% of their breeding-season food. Fruits and seeds make up most of the rest. Berries are a favored food during migration. Among wild fruit, juneberries, poison oak, and elderberries make common meals. Other regular foods include grains like oats and wheat, and weed seeds such as dock, pigweed, chickweed, and bur clover. They also feed on cultivated orchard fruit like figs, mulberries, cherries, apricots, plums, blackberries, and crabapples. In spring and summer, they feed at sunflower seed feeders and at nectar feeders set out for orioles. Where their range overlaps with wintering monarch butterflies, grosbeaks eat large numbers of these insects. Black-headed Grosbeaks don’t seem to suffer from the toxins concentrated in the monarchs’ bodies, which render them inedible to most birds.