Monday, 2 March 2020

[Maine-birds] Abundant crossbills

Friends and I have been taking trips to areas with substantial Red Spruce groves over the last several weeks. White-winged Crossbills are numerous and Red Crossbills are around in places. Pine Siskins are widespread. Some of the crossbills are displaying breeding behaviors as well, we've had male White-winged Crossbills feeding females in two locations. We've had good success is driving slowly on minor state routes and secondary roads, where the crossbills congregate for grit/salt. There's also been a few Boreal Chickadees, Canada Jays, and Northern Shrikes on our trips. 

There's two weekends left (until March 15) for this year's winter bird atlas and we may not get another good year for crossbills during the winter-atlas 2018-2022 period. Lots of areas from the western mountains through northern Maine and downeast Maine that have very little winter atlas coverage to date. Here's a link to the map of recent sitings of White-winged Crossbills (zoom in to see the locations) and a link to winter bird atlas info, in case anyone is looking for a road trip in the next few weeks. Also below are links to a couple eBird lists with pictures of roadside crossbills, from our Saturday trip to the greater Wytopitlock area.



https://ebird.org/checklist/S65298747  

Glenn Hodgkins
Hallowell


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