Date: 1/14/26 7:24 am From: Karen Kottlowski <kkottlowski...> Subject: Re: Pine Grosbeak Gaspe
Thanks Deb for the photo and Nick for the charts. My only sighting of pine grosbeaks was in the summer of 2018 on a trail through a woods in Newfoundland. You are right, Deb. They don’t seem to care if people are nearby. While on that walk, 2 pine grosbeaks landed on a tree branch near us and began mating! I still have a poster of Pennsylvania winter birds that I bought in the ‘70s where the pine grosbeak is on the top right. I tell myself, “You are never going to see that bird in PA”, but maybe I’m wrong?
Karen
Sent from my iPad
On Jan 13, 2026, at 6:08 PM, Nick Bolgiano <nickbolgiano...> wrote:
I had not been getting SCBIRDCL attachments, but I received Deb's PIGR photo, so some change apparently happened.
To respond to Deb's post, I attach a Pine Grosbeak graph that I created from PA Christmas Bird Count data. Pine Grosbeak used to be a bird seen annually in the state CBC, but now is rare in the state, I suspect because winters have become warmer. It is almost hard to believe that >25% of PA CBC sites reported Pine Grosbeak, as happened six times during the 1950s-1970s.
To summarize winter finch data, I like to use two variables: the percent of sites reporting to assess incidence and the mean count/10 party-hours to assess density. That is why there are two trend graphs in this figure.
I have encountered Pine Grosbeak two times in central PA, both at Black Moshannon SP, in 2001 and 2002, but I don't think that it will happen again.
Nick Bolgiano
On Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 7:32 AM Grove, Deborah Shuey <dsg4...><mailto:<dsg4...>> wrote:
Hi
One of the Pine Grosbeaks that I saw before was on the Gaspe Peninsula when Greg and I visited in 2007. We came upon it on a path and it was not concerned about us.
The interesting observation that you don’t see in the photo is that while we watched it, it gathered little twigs in its mouth. It had at least 5 or 6 before it flew off.
