Didn’t get a picture but we had an Evening Grosbeak at the feeder this morning. Cool looking bird. Apparently part of the “irruption” is song birds that are in Michigan.

like these ?

Thumbian -

We have evening, black-headed, and pine grosbeaks relatively common out here in the west. However, we are avid birders and we've never documented a rose-breasted grosbeak (which you probably have pretty commonly) until this previous spring. Sure interesting to see them in this country.

Huh….
Mole, are they common by you? I have never seen one here.
Gulo, yes, we have lots of rose breasted around. One the prettiest birds we have.

Evening Grosbeaks are a mystery to me. When I was in high school they were so common that my mother complained that they were eating all the sunflower seeds too fast! We had numerous birds in bunches nearly all winter long. Fast forward 50 years and I have seen two (2) here in maybe the last 10 years. I live 100 miles further north too. This season it seems they are being seen in numbers all over the lower peninsula.

Interesting J.Morse. Out here, we seem to be about level on the evening grosbeak numbers between the late 1960s-early 70s and now. They've remained pretty common. Black-headed grosbeaks maybe up slightly, but probably stable. Seeing that rose-breasted for us was a real treat. He stayed around for about two weeks last spring. Hopefully he'll be back with a girlfriend or two this next spring. We don't see enough pine grosbeaks to have any impressions on population trends. They seem to prefer the subalpine habitat.