Tag Archives: county big year

Birds: Making Ends Meet with a Crossed Bill

One of the birds I have yet to see in Washington County, or anywhere, is a crossbill – either a Red Crossbill or a White-winged Crossbill.  This week’s Adirondack Almanac has a nice article on them by Steven Faccio of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies.  Here’s the first part of the piece:

Crossbills are one of our most specialized groups of birds, feeding almost exclusively on conifer seeds. These hardy, nomadic finches have evolved oddly-shaped bills that allow them to exploit a food source before it becomes available to most other birds. However, being so specialized and relying on a single primary source of food means that when that food is unavailable, they have to search far and wide to make ends meet.

Adult female White-winged Crossbill. photo by Wildreturn

Adult female White-winged Crossbill. photo by Wildreturn

North America has two species of crossbills – white-winged crossbills (Loxia leucoptera) and red crossbills (Loxia curvirostra). Both are widespread across boreal regions dominated by conifer trees, and populations extend south into mountainous areas, with red crossbills reaching as far south as Mexico. In the Northeast, the more slender-billed white-winged crossbill, which is more commonly observed, spends most of its time foraging on the relatively small cones of spruce, balsam fir, hemlock, and tamarack, while red crossbills are typically associated with large-coned white and red pines.

Based on their distinctive flight calls, ornithologists have identified 9 or 10 types, or “morphs,” of red crossbills. Although some researchers believe that many of these types deserve species status, taxonomists have yet to agree. Moreover, they can’t seem to agree on just what to call them – are they morphs, super-species, sibling species, or sub-species? What they do know is that six red crossbill types have evolved bills that are each adapted to feed on cones from a single species of conifer tree. Such specialization requires that crossbills depend on finding a particular species of conifer seed, because, compared to other finches, crossbills are rather inefficient at foraging on non-conifer seeds. For crossbills, the most important characteristic of a conifer tree is that its cones stay closed, or partially closed, through late winter and into spring. If cones open too early, less specialized species, such as pine siskins or nuthatches, will eat the seeds.

Read the whole article here.

So, I’m psyched to find some of these for my County Big Year, either pretty soon before they head north or this Fall.  Got to be at the right place at the right time.  Good birding.

BIG YEAR COUNTING IN A COUNTY

This article struck home as I go through a period of no new birds in my searches.  It’s mid-February, what do I expect in Vermont?  Hey, at least a Northern Hawk Owl, or a Snowy, or a Varied Thrush — all birds we’ve had in the past.  But this post, written by Lynn Barber on the ABA blog, gives me some comfort.  But not too much — she’s going to Honduras soon for a break.  I’m going out in the woods to cut more firewood but perhaps I’ll find some wandering bird — you never know.  Here’s Lynn’s fine post:

Surprise, surprise! Doing a county big year is a different thing than doing a state big year, and of course very different than an ABA big year. That is of course particularly true of a big year done in a county that is way up north, Pennington County in South Dakota. I’m not sure what the number of birds possible for a year is, because I do not have data on anyone else having done a big year in this county. I know, however, that the number of birds possible in one county, even a large county, in western South Dakota is much less than in all of the state, or in Texas, or in the ABA area.On January 1st this year, two of us doing a fairly intense big day in Pennington County found considerably more than half of the likely winter birds in the county. Most of the birds that may be somewhere in the county right now that I have not already seen this year are probably here year round. In other words, there seems to be very little need to go birding right now to try to find the birds that are around but that I have not yet seen.

The lure right now after finding most of the likely regular winter county birds is the hypothetical wandering bird. That’s what gets me out into the snow and wind, sometimes. The problem is that South Dakota is not likely to get many wandering birds in the winter. The wandering Pacific birds (Brambling for example) or wandering Atlantic birds (Northern Lapwing) or wandering Mexican birds (like Brown Jays or Crimson-collared Grosbeaks) are not likely going to wander as far as South Dakota. What I can hope for as winter hangs around for a few more months are winter birds that are sometimes found in nearby counties but not in this one. Examples include Gray-crowned Rosy-finches that are found in most winters one county to the west (on a mountain top) or Common Ravens that are rarely found in the state but one was found last year to the north and west of Pennington County, or Pinyon Jays that in theory could wander to this county from other Black Hills counties.

Or maybe I could do the unexpected and relax about birding. I find that staring out my home office window at our bird feeding areas, watching the over two dozen wintering American Tree Sparrows, and photographing them, including short videos, is very satisfying. Sometimes I even forget for days on end that I am doing a big year. In fact I’m beginning to suspect that there will be very little that will be big about this year. Oddly enough, that does not particularly bother me. Of course when spring migration approaches, all that may change. I just cannot imagine being non-frenetic during warbler time.

In the meantime, I’m heading for Honduras in a couple of weeks. This will be my first international birding trip since I got hooked on doing these big years. It’s not only that the big years drained all our funds away. They also did not allow me to look outside the U.S. Doing a county big year has given me freedom to expand my birding to non-big-year birding, and I can hardly wait!

American tree sparrow

One of the American Tree Sparrows in Lynn’s yard. photo by Lynn Barber

Note:  Lynn Barber is a noted birder who recently published Extreme Birder: One Woman’s Big Year