A male Evening Grosbeak on a berried pine branch, in the restrained palette of John James Audubon’s Birds of America: cream ground, dark green needles, the bird’s gold body lit against the black and white of the wing.

Coccothraustes vespertinus is the bird that arrives in irruption years and empties a feeder, a goldfinch scaled up and made heavy, carrying a pale bill built to crack cherry pits. A winter flock of them is rarer now than it was a generation ago.