Evening grosbeak

The evening grosbeak was formally described in 1825 by the American naturalist William Cooper and given the binomial name Fringilla vespertina. Cooper had been sent a specimen by the ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft that had been collected in the evening near Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Cooper recorded the name of the bird in the Ojibwe language as "Paushkundamo". The IOC checklist and the Handbook of the Birds of the World place the evening grosbeak and the closely related hooded grosbeak in the genus Hesperiphona. However, the Clements Checklist and the AOS checklist place the evening and hooded grosbeaks in the genus Coccothraustes with the hawfinch. The genus Hesperiphona was introduced by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1850. Three subspecies are recognised: • H. v. vespertina (Cooper, W, 1825) – central, east Canada and northeast USA • H. v. brooksi Grinnell, 1917 – west Canada and northwest USA • H. v. montana Ridgway, 1874 – southwest USA to southwest Mexico ==Description==

The evening grosbeak is similar in appearance to the Eurasian hawfinch, both being bulky, heavily built finches with large bills and short tails. The evening grosbeak ranges in length from and spans across the wings. In a large sampling of grosbeaks in Pennsylvania during winter, males weighed from , with an average of , while females weighed from , with an average of . Among standard measurements, the wing chord is , the tail is , the bill is and the tarsus is . The adult has a short black tail, black wings and a large pale bill. The adult male has a bright yellow forehead and body; its head is brown and there is a large white patch in the wing. The adult female is mainly olive-brown, greyer on the underparts and with white patches in the wings. They also have a loud distinctive 'chew' call, similar to a glorified house sparrow. ==Breeding and ecology==

The breeding habitat is coniferous and mixed forest across Canada and the western mountainous areas of the United States and Mexico. It is an extremely rare vagrant to the British Isles, with just two records so far. The nest is built on a horizontal branch or in a fork of a tree. The migration of this bird is variable; in some winters, it may wander as far south as the southern U.S. These birds forage in trees and bushes, sometimes on the ground. They mainly eat seeds, berries, and insects. Outside of the nesting season they often feed in flocks. Sometimes, they will swallow fine gravel. The range of this bird has expanded far to the east in historical times, possibly due to plantings of Manitoba maples and other maples and shrubs around farms and the availability of bird feeders in winter. ==Gallery==

File:Coccothraustes-vespertinus-001.jpg|Female evening grosbeak in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada File:Evening Grosbeak Male.jpg|Male evening grosbeak in Truchas, New Mexico File:Evening Grosbeak 3.jpg|Female in winter, Gatineau Park, Quebec, Canada File:Evening Grosbeak Lady Slipper Trail Angel Fire NM 2019-07-15 12-28-00 (48294389096).jpg|Group in Carson National Forest, New Mexico File:Hesperiphona vespertina CT2.ogv|Feeding on sunflower seeds