One heck of a bill
In the land of brilliant adaptations, the White-Winged Crossbill has to make you sit up and take notice. Yes, most every bird has a beak or bill that is adapted to the food the bird eats. For instance, the Clark’s Nutcracker’s bill is specifically designed to open the cones of the Whitebark Pine tree. Some bills, like the ones on the Bald Eagle or Osprey, are well designed for eating fish.
But the White-Winged Crossbill’s bill is… crossed. How is a bill that has the upper part on one side, and the lower part on the other side, good for anything? Well, if you want to get inside spruce cones, it’s the perfect tool for prying them apart. And yes, there can be “left-billed” or “right-billed” birds. There seems to be no advantage either way.
Irruptive
White-Winged Crossbills are an irruptive species. Some years, none are seen. Other years, there can be many around. In addition, they travel in larger than usual flocks of 20-40 birds at a time. While non-migratory, they certainly move around alot to find the cone supplies. When a flock finds a tree full of them, it can literally rain down cones for minutes as the flock strips a tree clear.
In this way, they are a bit of a competitor to Red Squirrels. There tends to be fewer Crossbills where there are more squirrels. At the same time, if a Crossbill flock finds a well-supplied squirrel midden, the flock can get a lot of the squirrel’s food before the squirrel can chase them away.
Not our only red/yellow bird
White-Winged Crossbills are occasionally mistaken for the slightly more common Pine Grosbeak. Male Grosbeaks are also red with white wing bars, and females are also yellow instead of red. But Grosbeaks always look plumper and smoother to us, and they have very different looking bills.
You can also find orange White-Wings. There are the young males, and they’re moulting into their fully red feathers.
A boreal forest bird
You’ll find these birds around the globe in the northern coniferous forest, from Finland across Russia to Alaska, and across North America as far south as Montana and Michigan. The European/Russian sub-species is called the Two-Barred Crossbill. Through much of their range, they are big fans of the cones of various Larch and Tamarack species. In most of K-Country, its spruce cones that make up the majority of their diet.
Meet some of the other fascinating critters of K-Country here!
