Classic Book Library : Science : Bird Neighbors. : Chapter 56 : Page 1 of 2

Length -- 7 inches. About an inch larger than the English sparrow. Male -- Deep blue, dark, and almost black on the back; wings and tail black, slightly edged with blue, and the former marked with bright chestnut. Cheeks and chin black. Bill heavy and bluish. Female -- Grayish brown above, sometimes with bluish tinge on head, lower back, and shoulders. Wings dark olive-brown, with faint buff markings; tail same shade as wings, but witb bluish gray markings. Underneath brownish cream-color, the breast feathers often blue at the base. Range -- United States, from southern New England westward to the Rocky Mountains and southward into Mexico and beyon d.M ost common in the Southwest. Rare along the Atlantic seaboard. Migrations -- May. September. Summer resident.

This beautiful but rather shy and solitary bird occasionally wanders eastward to rival the bluebird and the indigo bunting in their rare and lovely coloring, and eclipse them both in song. Audubon, we remember, found the nest in New Jersey. Pennsylvania is still favored with one now and then, but it is in the Southwest only that the blue grosbeak is as common as the evening grosbeak is in the Northwest. Since rice is its favorite food, it naturally abounds where that cereal grows. Seeds and kernels of the hardest kinds, that its heavy, strong beak is well adapted to crack, constitute its diet when it strays beyond the rice-fields.