30 October 2025
Cornell Lab’s Ontario FeederWatch ushered in the winter season last week with pine grosbeaks (Pinicola enucleator) on camera.
See the beautiful rosy male and olive-yellow female in the highlights video below. Listen carefully and you’ll hear their contact calls, a single clear whistle. You’ll also hear crows and ravens in the background.
“This streaming cam is located in a residential neighborhood in Manitouwadge, Ontario, Canada, a small town 430 miles northeast of Duluth, Minnesota, and is hosted by Tammie and Ben Haché who have been members of Project FeederWatch since 2002. Their backyard has a large birch tree, a mixed stand of conifers and several fruit and berry producing shrubs. Just beyond the backyard there’s a small swamp as well as larger stands of woods and a small lake. It’s an excellent location to see winter finches, like redpolls and grosbeaks, as well as two species of Jays and even Ruffed Grouse.” — Paraphrased from Cornell Lab Bird Cams
Do pine grosbeaks come to southwestern Pennsylvania? No. These bulky finches eat mountain ash berries (Sorbus americana) in winter and won’t leave home unless the fruit is scarce. Even then, they only wander to areas with lots of mountain-ash berries.
Southwestern Pennsylvania has a few of mountain-ash trees planted as landscaping but these trees do not occur here naturally. The last time pine grosbeaks came to southwestern Pennsylvania was in 1973.
If you want to see pine grosbeaks, watch the Ontario Feedercam at http://allaboutbirds.org/feederwatchcam This link also has highlight reels and information about the birds.
I enjoy watching this feeder in winter. There are often several Pine and Evening Grosbeaks and often large numbers of Redpolls and siskins. It’s fun when the Ruffed Grouse is on the feeder; nobody else comes when the grouse is there. I’ve even seen the homeowner on camera filling the feeder a few times!