Karen Wils photo Evening grosbeaks at the old bird feeder in 1987.

ESCANABA — It’s a sunny February afternoon in 1982 at camp.

The hot water hisses in the tea kettle on the woodstove. Outside it is 15 degrees; inside camp a balmy 65 degrees.

Winter is in full swing across Upper Michigan. But at least the hours of daylight are slowly increasing setting the snow-covered ground all a sparkling.

On the other side of the window, the woodlands are silent and still. Even the friendly chick-a-dees have flown off into the treetops.

My dad sits at the table by the big window sipping his coffee and playing solitaire. He looks up from his cards and says “Oh no, here they come. It’s time for the attack of the banana birds.”

And there they would be flocking into the hardwoods like a yellow army. Evening grosbeaks stormed down upon our little bird feeder.

Out of the spruces and balsams they’d come by the dozens. The bird’s happy flutelike chirps would fill the silence. The females landed on the bird feeder first and the rather bird robin sized gals would contently start to devour sunflower seeds.

Creamy, gray with a sprinkling of yellow and black bands on their wings, the female grosbeaks were impressive after the small chick-a-dees, and goldfinches left.

Then the boys bombarded the feeder. Hungry and handsome are the only two words to describe the male grosbeaks. A proud chisel beak, black tail, white wing patch and brilliant yellow plumage make this fellow stand out like a Christmas tree ornament.

Because of their yellow color and long length, my dad nicknamed these birds “banana bird” many years ago. When the evening grosbeaks visited, they feasted for a long time. They’d come down from the trees and sit and eat and eat at the bird feeder avoiding the ground.

They could wipe out a good supply of sunflower seeds in no time at all. But when we fed birds at camp in the middle of winter all were welcomed.

Who would have ever guessed that by the year 2000, the evening grosbeak would be a rare visitor to our bird feeder (the rose-breasted grosbeak, a summertime bird, still visits often).

In the last ten years we have seen no grosbeaks at camp. How could a bird that was so plentiful that they were almost annoying, become so few?

Friends and neighbors who watch birds told me the same sad story, “what happened to all of the grosbeaks?”

So I did a little research. The Christmas bird counts data indicated a steep decline in the evening grosbeaks starting by the mid-1980s. The North American Breeding Bird survey noted a 90% population loss in just a few decades.

Some of the reasons listed for the decline in these birds were:

— Climate change — these birds thrive in healthy boreal forests. Their “grosbeaks” help them eat the mast, seeds and cones of many trees. Insects like the spruce bud worm have devastated conifer stands in our area. More frequent forest fires challenge the birds. The loss of mature conifer stands in some places due to logging that was noted to have an impact on them.

— Contaminated bird feeders (never bleached or cleaned) lead to salmonellosis, a disease that can killed some grosbeaks.

A healthy thriving forest of deep green conifers and mixed hardwoods shrouded in snow in the winter and quenching rains in the summer is the recipe for happy grosbeaks.

I hope the “banana birds” make a come back so that some day my grandkids and I can listen to their songs.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.