Black-headed Grosbeak

1/250s at f8, ISO:800, Canon Mark III 1Ds w/800mm,


The Black-headed Grosbeak is a medium-size seed-eating bird in the same family as the Northern Cardinal. The Black-headed Grosbeak prefers to live in deciduous and mixed wooded areas. It likes to be in areas where there are large trees as well as thick bushes, such as patches of broadleaved trees and shrubs within conifer forests, including streamside corridors, river bottoms, lakeshores, and wetlands. Females build nests among the dense foliage on an outer branch of tall broadleaved trees or shrubs, 3 to 35 feet above ground. It lays 2 to 5 pale green, blue or grey eggs that are spotted with reddish and dark brown. The male and female incubate the eggs for 12 to 14 days. After the eggs have hatched the fledglings leave the nest in about 11 or 12 days, however they are unable to fly for another two weeks. Both adults feed the young. Besides eating seeds, berries, insects, spiders and fruit, the Black-headed Grosbeak can safely eat the poisonous Monarch butterfly. Black-headed Grosbeaks from the US and Canada are highly migratory, wintering in Mexico.
Medicine Creek, NE
 
06/20/2009