Every bird guidebook map I checked showed the white-winged crossbill’s range reaching into Southern Canada, but rarely into Washington state. But birds can’t read maps and one showed up at my feeder yesterday.
Last week I got bored watching dark-eyed juncos battle one another at my feeder over wild bird seed. Hoping to attract a few goldfinches, I bought two feeders and filled one with black sunflower seeds and the other with a suet cake. Although the goldfinches have yet to make an appearance, I did attract a downy woodpecker, a black-headed grosbeak, red-breasted nuthatches, pine siskins, chestnut-backed chickadees, black-capped chickadees, a spotted towhee, house finches, and what was unmistakeably a white-winged crossbill.
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| White-winged crossbill |
This rosy colored bird looks similar to a purple finch, a house finch, and a red crossbill, but the distinctive two white wing-bars was the telltale sign that this bird was most definitely the white-winged crossbill.
This rare find was not only added to my annual bird journal, but to my life list!
Nice. I love watching the different birds that flit in and out of the trees and bushes just outside my office window. Sometime I don't get a lot of writing done. LOL
That's why I don't put a feeder outside my office window, even though the place where I work is in a wooded area. Yesterday, I announced I'd heard the call of a pileated woodpecker and the office emptied.