In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the rose-breasted grosbeak in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Louisiana.

[6] When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.

[9] The genus name Pheucticus is from Ancient Greek φευκτικός - pheuktikós, "shy", from φεύγω - pheúgo, "to flee", and the specific ludovicianus is from Neo-Latin and refers to Louisiana.

At one year of age—in their first breeding season—males are scaly above like fully adult males in winter plumage, and still retain the immature's browner wings.

Unlike males, females can easily be confused with the black-headed grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus) where their ranges overlap in the central United States and south-central Canada.

In particular, the northern birds migrate south through the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, to winter from central-southern Mexico through Central America and the Caribbean to Peru and Venezuela.

It appears as if they remain on their breeding grounds longer today than they did in the early 20th century, when migrants were more commonly seen in May and August than in April or September.

[23] During breeding it is fairly territorial; in winter, it roams the lands in groups of about a handful of birds, and sometimes in larger flocks of a dozen or more.

Rose-breasted grosbeaks were the only one of 70 migratory songbird species in the eastern United States shown in males to have produced sperm while still far south of their breeding location.

[24] Male grosbeaks tend to arrive a few days to a week before the females and pair formation apparently occurs on the breeding grounds.

[29][30] Both the male and the female apparently participate in selecting and building the nest, which is on a tree branch, over vines or any elevated woody vegetation.

[35] Captive grosbeaks have been recorded living up to 24 years of age, making them quite a long-living passerine excluding the pressures of surviving in the wild.

Natural predators of eggs and nestlings include blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata), common grackles (Quiscalus quiscula), raccoons (Procyon lotor), gray (Sciurus carolinensis) and red (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) squirrels.

[46] In grosbeaks from the north-central United States and southern Canada, 52% of the stomach contents were comprised by invertebrates, predominantly beetles; 19.3% was made up of wild fruits; 15.7% by weed seeds; 6.5% by cultivated fruits and plants, including peas, corn (Zea mays), oats (Avena sativa) and wheat (Triticum vulgare); and the remaining 6.5% by other plant material, including tree buds and flowers.

[48] Range expansions also seem to have occurred elsewhere, for example in northern Ohio, where it bred rarely if at all in the 1900s (decade), but it is by no means an uncommon breeder today.

In general, though it requires mature woodland to breed and is occasionally caught as a cage bird, the rose-breasted grosbeak is not at all rare, and not considered a threatened species by the IUCN.