[CT Birds] Red Crossbills by ear

[Clay Taylor]

Hi all -

During Sunday's Old Lyme CBC, we were walking down by the Westbrook Town Beach, and a small flock of finches flew by, with a few making a soft, buzzy call, not harsh at all.    The caffeine and sugar-fueled supercomputer that is my brain eliminated all the finch-ey flight calls that I knew, and commanded me to blurt out "Redpolls!", for lack of a better name.    I also said, "a very goofy Redpoll call, too..." since I wasn't totally convinced, but I had to say SOMETHING, right?    Heh, heh.

A few minutes later, as we piled into our cars and were leaving the Town Beach parking lot, I heard the same call (multiple birds this time), and about 20 reddish finches came down and landed on the telephone wires next to the pine trees.    Ooops...Red Crossbills!

A bunch went down to the water puddle at the curb, and then up into the pines, where they started feeding and chattering together.   I waved Hank Golet over, and we watched them (no photo ops - they were always on the wrong side of the branches) for a few minutes until they flew off to the east.    

As I hopped into the car, I reflected on my ID gaffe, and realized that I have never heard Red Crossbills calling in a flock before.     Back in the late 70s and early 80s, when crossbills were a regular occurrence in the Salmon River State Forest, they were usually White-winged Crossbills with only an occasional Red in the mix, so White-wing Crossbill was the call I knew best.

Whereas White-winged had a very sharp, well-enunciated JIP-JIP-JIP call, with the "J" and "P" very obvious, these Reds were doing a softer, slurred "jisshhh-jisshh" that had more of a warbling quality to it than a staccato note.

As I drove down the street, the flock flushed from a nearby pine tree, flew 100 yards down the shoreline, and landed in a big pine tree on the dunes.    I pulled into the driveway of a (hopefully) unoccupied summer cottage, grabbed the scope and camera, and in the next few minutes took some very nice photos of them feeding on the pine cones.   

Now that I had the opportunity to listen, I quickly realized that there were in fact two distinctly different calls being uttered - most birds were making the softer, slurred one, but a few made one that was a little louder and emphasized the beginning "j" sound more.   It was nowhere near the quality of a White-wing's call, but I remembered Nick's note about recording the calls of the Hammonasset Beach birds and determining that there were lots of Type 2 and some Type 3 Red Crossbills in the flock.   I'm guessing here that the softer ones were the Type 2, and the sharper ones are the Type 3.    Neat!

I learn something every day,

Clay Taylor
Moodus, CT
ctaylor at att.net