These posts remind me of when I moved from Boulder up to 8600 ft in North Beaver near Pinecliffe in 1996. While I didn't actually move up until June 1st, the homeowner had me come up to housesit in either late April or early May. They had a big kitchen window planter box that they filled with Black Oil Sunflower and 60-80 Red Crossbills were swarming that box. These were adult birds of both sexes. When I actually moved up, the planter box was gone but I put up a bunch of feeders until a bear showed up a few weeks later. I never again saw the spectacle of sunflower eating crossbills.
Good birding,
Chip Clouse
Lakewood
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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