Steppie wrote -

>Saturday 20 July 2 Red Crossbills - possibly immatures - flew into black
>cottonwoods along upper Hanson Creek on the Yakima Training Center 45 km
>east of suitable habitat along the east slopes of the Cascades. My only
>other records away from the mountains in summer include several on 5 and 6
>July and again 3 and 4 August 1987 in Wapato. Is there a documented usual
>post-fledging movement of Red Crossbills or is this a sign of a poor Cascade
>seed crop? Red Crossbills are most likely over the lowlands in November and
>early December in Yakima County, so these July and August records are
>interesting.

Don't know if it is related or not, but Red Crossbills have been flooding into
central BC for the past couple of months. Hard to go out into conifer woods now
without running into them.

On another subject, I talked to Wayne Campbell the other night who had just
returned from 5 weeks of field work in northern BC. The weather was against him
almost the whole time with little bird song and not much response to pishing.
This necessitated putting on the waders and doing a lot of slogging through
fields/swamps, etc. What he found was both good and bad. Good: he found *52*
Sharp-tailed Sparrows in suitable habitat around the Dawson Creek area
as well as several nests. This species is generally considered one of the rarest
in the province. Bad: many of the nests of birds such as Red-winged Blackbird
held dead or dying broods, supposedly due to the cool weather holding back
insect hatches. Hopefully the parents will attempt a second nesting. There will
likely be many ramifications for "normal" bird patterns of our cold spring.

- Jack

Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC
jcbowling at mindlink.bc.ca



cheers,
Jack

- Jack Bowling
Prince George, BC
jcbowling at mindlink.bc.ca