So in part of our birding travels lately, we've been specifically looking for crossbills. Crossbills spend most of their time in the Arctic, but have been spotted locally this winter in fairly good numbers. When we were driving around about a month ago, we thought we spotted some flying at the tops of some evergreen trees, but due to the distance and the light, we weren't entirely sure. We also went to Bronte Creek Prov. Park after reading on some websites that crossbills had been sighted there as well. Same story- we may have seen them, but we weren't 100 percent sure. Fast forward to this morning, we are having breakfast at my parents' house (yes, a big wknd outing for us) and my mom is standing at her window and looking out. She comments on all the finches and siskins she has there and then says, "Oh, what's that?". I turn around and see a male white-winged crossbill sitting in a branch of the evergreen, just hanging out. I called for Dave to come see. The bird left the tree and then went down to the ground, too close to the house for us to see. Then we noticed a female white-winged crossbill foraging through the seed under the tree. Dave sprinted up to my parents' room to get a pair of binoculars and the camera from our bag. I think he may have missed the close-ups of both, but we were able to watch them in the next door neighbours' tree for awhile. We counted three males and one female. Pretty exciting and it shows you don't have to go so far to see something unusual. I would never have guessed we would have seen crossbills in my parents front yard.
Unfortunately we didn't get any pics of them (yet).
Here's a link to the pic I posted above:
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