• picture
  • picture
  • picture
  • picture
Public Radio's Environmental News Magazine (follow us on Google News)

BirdNote: Crossbills Nest in Winter

Air Date: Week of

A red crossbill. (Photo: Skinnbrager)

It may still be winter in parts of the US, but reporter Michael Stein explains that crossbills are already busy eating and nesting thanks to nutritious pine-cones.



Transcript

[BIRDNOTE THEME]

CURWOOD: There’s still snow on the ground in places in America -- but the days are getting longer. And as Michael Stein points out in today’s BirdNote, some species are already busy with the tasks of spring.

http://birdnote.org/show/crossbills-nest-winter

BirdNote®
Crossbill Audacity - Crossbills Nest in Winter

[White-winged Crossbill call]

STEIN: From the tip-top of a black spruce, a White-winged Crossbill sings a rapid-fire tribute to winter. He’s got a good reason to sing. Even in the cold, crossbills are nesting.

Among virtually all our songbirds, the breeding season begins with the longer, warmer days of spring — and the seasonal bounty of insects, fruits and seeds. But for crossbills … it’s all about the food. When the evergreens hang heavy with snow and cones, crossbills can get all the calories they need for the demands of reproduction: courtship, egg-laying, and feeding young.

North America’s two crossbill species, White-winged and Red, are vagabonds, wandering in flocks until they find a suitable cone crop, where they might then stop to breed in small groups … almost any time of year.

[Red Crossbill call]

Crossbills are finches, and yes, their bills do cross at the tip — an oddity that helps them pry and extract seeds from those nutritious cones of spruce, fir, pine, and tamarack.

[White-winged Crossbill call]

So even in the grips of winter, when most songbirds are months away from the breeding season, somewhere among the snowy conifers, crossbills are already warming up!
I’m Michael Stein.

###


The white-winged crossbill. (Photo: Zak Pohlen)

Written by Bryan Pfeiffer
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. 133361 and 133363 recorded by Geoffrey A. Keller. 138310 recorded by Gregory F. Budney and Matthew A Young.
BirdNote’s theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Sallie Bodie
© 2017 Tune In to Nature.org February 2017 Narrator: Michael Stein

http://birdnote.org/show/crossbills-nest-winter

CURWOOD: To catch a glimpse of these birds, go to our website LOE.org.

 

Links

Listen on the BirdNote Website

Audobon: “How Crossbills and Other Birds Are Re-writing the Rules of Evolution

 

Living on Earth wants to hear from you!

Living on Earth
62 Calef Highway, Suite 212
Lee, NH 03861
Telephone: 617-287-4121
E-mail: comments@loe.org

Newsletter [Click here]

Donate to Living on Earth!
Living on Earth is an independent media program and relies entirely on contributions from listeners and institutions supporting public service. Please donate now to preserve an independent environmental voice.

Newsletter
Living on Earth offers a weekly delivery of the show's rundown to your mailbox. Sign up for our newsletter today!

Sailors For The Sea: Be the change you want to sea.

The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment: Committed to protecting and improving the health of the global environment.

Contribute to Living on Earth and receive, as our gift to you, an archival print of one of Mark Seth Lender's extraordinary wildlife photographs. Follow the link to see Mark's current collection of photographs.

Buy a signed copy of Mark Seth Lender's book Smeagull the Seagull & support Living on Earth