Thursday, 31 August 2023

Re: [cobirds] Red Crossbills & sunflowers

Regarding the Red Crossbills eating Sunflower seeds, my friend Lynda Ryan shared this on social media, as well. She witnessed young Red Crossbills feeding on Sunflower seeds at Rock Ledge Ranch in Colorado Springs. She was also very surprised. Here is a picture she took. 


Lynda is not part of this group, so I asked her permission to share this with you all. 

Cinnamon Bergeron 

On Wed, Aug 30, 2023 at 9:09 AM Dave <daleatherman@msn.com> wrote:
Richard Trinker just reported to eBird an observation of juvenile red crossbills at low elevation eating sunflower seed obtained from flowers at a public garden in Boulder. I had the same exact experience yesterday in two different yards on the east side of Fort Collins. The individuals I watched were young enough to have mostly straight beaks. Their vocalizations were a better way to quickly discern their not being house finches than their general appearance.  Juveniles have also been at Grandview Cemetery in Fort Collins recently.  It has been suggested this might indicate local, urban breeding. However, Richard's and the Fort Collins observations suggest to me a widespread Front Range  shift of young birds to low elevation of unknown duration to take advantage of an abundant, easy to obtain nutrition source.

The next issue of "Colorado Birds" has a "The Hungry Bird" article on crossbills foods OTHER THAN conifer seed but I didn't say much about sunflower seed and juveniles because the literature doesn't address it and I hadn't personally seen it before yesterday.

Dave Leatherman
Fort Collins

Sent from my iPhone

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