As you may know Red Crossbills can be typically be identified to type by their calls. Matt Young at Cornell Lab of Ornithology has challenged Maine birders to find crossbills and record their calls this winter. He is particularly interested in whether Type 3 Red Crossbills are present as far east as Maine in this year of heavy cone crops. From Matt: "They should be fairly common there right now I'd think, but for some reason, nothing...they have been in Ontario, Quebec, northern NY, Vermont, NH in solid numbers, and even a few in western Mass. Do they just not make it that far east if they don"t have too? It's a big question for me right now." The most common type of crossbills in Maine has been Type 10. I believe the only documented Type 3 crossbills in Maine are from Monhegan a few years ago. Other crossbill types are also possible in Maine. Depending on future research, these crossbill types may be recognized as separate species.
-- Recordings don't need to be fancy, voice-memo type recordings from a smartphone are normally good enough. Audio files can be easily loaded to eBird and they automatically create sonograms which are fun to view to get visuals of calls and songs. Matt will identify crossbill types based on these, his email is may6@cornell.edu. It's then easy to use the change-species feature in an eBird list to add crossbill type. Crossbills are being seen in the western mountains, northern Maine, and coastal areas with substantial amounts of spruce, see eBird for specific locations. Thanks for your help with this important citizen science.
Glenn Hodgkins
Hallowell
Detailed info on crossbill types and audio recordings:
Maine birds mailing list
maine-birds@googlegroups.com
http://groups.google.com/group/maine-birds
https://sites.google.com/site/birding207
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