Hi all -
Following up on eBird reports, this morning I went to the spot outside Darrington where a flock of White-winged Crossbills [WWCR] have been reported.
As of this morning between 8-9am, there was a good-sized flock present.
The flock[s] were moving around quite a bit, but hopefully will stick around.

Thanks to David Poortinga for eBirding w/ good directions that worked like a charm:
The birds were at 48.2585,-121.6908. Park at the gate at the south end of 407th, and walk about half a mile to a 3-way intersection. Bear right, walk around the log barrier, and proceed about 200 yards. Hopefully, the birds will stick around for others as there was a decent amount of cones. Flight calls and "veet" calls audible on attached recording. I was hoping to get audio of them opening cones, which seemed very loud in real life, but that didn't come through on recordings.

I went to the point he described and almost immediately had several crossbills audible then visible. Over the hour, they moved around everywhere between that spot and the parking spot.

We've had a lot of WWCR reports this winter, but this is probably the first group that seems to have done more than fly-by for brief views. Hoping we get to see more in the coming months

Matt Bartels
Seattle, WA



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman11.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20201129/fe299bf6/attachment.html>