Tweeters and Scott,

I regularly see red crossbills in my neighborhood working on pine cones
in ornamental plantings. I've seen them in Japanese Black Pine,
Japanese Red Pine, Longleaf Pine, Italian Stone Pine and once in a Dwarf
White Pine right at ground level. Could it be they are "learning" to
exploit this new food source in suburban areas? Could be to a crossbill
that a cone is a cone, and when we wipe out the Hemlocks, Western White
Pines and Lodgepoles that they are used to finding in certain areas they
just turn to our (poorly) selected replacements.

Rob Conway
Bellevue, WA

robin_conway at hotmail.com

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>Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 22:35:34 -0800 (PST)
>Reply-To: sdownes at u.washington.edu
>From: "S. Downes" <sdownes at u.washington.edu>
>To: tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
>Subject: Out of place Red Crossbill
>
>Tweets,
>I was tending to my bonsai on the deck this afternoon, and heard and a
>bird rustling around in the almost ripe pine cones of apartment grounds
>next to our deck. I looked up and a male Crossbill was trying to
extract
>the seeds that were a bit premature.Not a normal food source anyhow
>(Ornamental pine species). I wondered what could possess a Red
>Crossbill to try a get premature seeds out of what are the only trees
with
>cones for about a block (and even at that only about twenty feet tall).
Strange.
>Can't seem to manage to coax a Rufous hummer to our feeder yet two
small
>pine trees attract a Red Crossbill, go figure. This is across the
street
>from Bitter Lake if anybody is interested.
>
>Scott Downes
>sdownes at u.washington.edu
>Seattle WA
>
>
>
>


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