[Birdtalk] FW: HOTLINE: Red Crossbill types and feeding

[Ryan O'Donnell]

Kim Sullivan forwarded my message to Craig Benkman, who studies call
types in Red Crossbills.  I found his response interesting and helpful
so I'm forwarding it to the list (see below).
 
Ryan P. O'Donnell
Department of Biology and the Ecology Center
Utah State University
5305 Old Main Hill
Logan, UT 84322-5305
 
http://200birds.blogspot.com

________________________________

From: Craig Benkman [mailto:cbenkman at uwyo.edu]
Sent: Thu 3/26/2009 4:58 PM
To: Kim Sullivan
Cc: Ryan O'Donnell; Alice Lindahl
Subject: Re: HOTLINE: Red Crossbill types and feeding



Hi Kim,

Thanks for forwarding these messages. This is a time of the year when
most
of the seeds have fallen out of the cones, and crossbills begin
wandering
and will show up at feeders. They've been at feeders a bit earlier in
Wyoming this year, and I suspect they will continue to show up at
feeders
over the next two months. There have been large numbers of crossbills in
the
Jackson Hole area this winter and perhaps your crossbills have moved
from
there.

Based on the photos (bills look rather small) and the description of the
calls, I suspect that these crossbills could be what we call type 4
crossbills (their calls remind be of a Dusky Flycatcher "whit" call -
its
ascending rather than descending as in most other call types). They tend
to
be much more common in the Pacific Northwest, but do show up in NW
Wyoming
and south into the Colorado Rockies often associated with large doug-fir
or
Engelmann spruce cone crops in our region. We get them very rarely in
southern Idaho. In the Northwest they are really tied to doug-fir, but
it is
a different subspecies than the one in Logan Canyon.

Keep your feeders full!

Best,
Craig Benkman


On 3/26/09 4:23 PM, "Kim Sullivan" <yejunco at biology.usu.edu> wrote:

> Craig,
>
> We have had some reports of unusual crossbills in Logan this week.  I
> thought you might be interested.
>
> Kim Sullivan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nancy Williams [mailto:nancy.moonbeam at gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 4:08 PM
> To: nancy.moonbeam at gmail.com
> Subject: HOTLINE: Red Crossbill types and feeding
>
(My forwarded message removed to save space)