They’re back! No, we’re not talking about icy roads (though those are on the way). We’re talking about a bird that is a favorite of many of us, the evening grosbeak. Over the last few weeks we’ve been occasionally hearing the characteristic call of the evening grosbeak as small flocks have passed overhead. Other birders around the state have also been seeing and hearing evening grosbeaks and a few lucky folks have had small flocks at their bird feeders.

Some of you may remember winters back in the 1960s, 70s and early 80s when flocks of hundreds of evening grosbeaks would sometimes descend on backyard bird-feeding stations and chomp through a 50 pound bag of sunflower seeds in a couple of days. Since those days, the numbers of evening grosbeaks across the continent has dropped steadily. In fact the numbers are down more than 80 percent over the last 40 years or so.

If you are not familiar with evening grosbeaks, then you’ll be in for a treat if one or more of them grace you with their presence at your feeder this winter. A plump bird just a tad smaller than a robin, the evening grosbeak is sometimes described as looking a bit like a giant goldfinch with a giant bill. Males are bright yellow on the belly and back with a bright yellow eyebrow set against a dark brown head and with black wings and a big patch of white in the wing. Females are drabber but still show the massive bill and the black and white in the wings.

The second part of its name (grosbeak) refers to its thick-based, oversized bill—very appropriate. But the first part of its name (evening) is completely inaccurate—for some reason the person who first collected and described the bird for Western science thought that the birds mostly only sang in the evening. There is no evidence that this is true and, in fact, there have been very few observations of evening grosbeaks singing at all! Interestingly, another bird named for its supposed propensity to sing in the evening is the vesper sparrow (“vespers” are evening prayers) but that bird, like most birds, sings more exuberantly in the early morning hours than the evening.

Evening grosbeaks may not do much singing but they make up for it by doing a lot of loud calling. Their calls sound a bit like the call of the familiar house sparrow but are more resonant, musical, and just plain loud! Back when large flocks would come into feeding stations, the noise was wonderful and made for a very birdy, boisterous scene.

Although poorly understood or documented, evening grosbeaks seemed to have spread eastward across the continent starting in the mid- to late-1800s and first being documented in Maine in 1889-90 when several specimens were taken including one at Bates College. They were confirmed to be nesting in the state by the 1940s and continue to do so in small numbers. Breeding birds seem to occur in summer on some of the spruce-fir dominated offshore islands and peninsulas, and in similar habitats farther north in the state and sometimes on mountaintops.

The birds coming south this year are likely to be coming down or across from the boreal forest region of Canada. Perhaps they had a good breeding season but found little food to sustain them into the colder months, triggering a large-scale movement that has sent them to us. Hopefully some of us will be blessed with at least a small flock of these great wanderers at our feeders this winter.

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the book, “Maine’s Favorite Birds.”