My long-awaited year and life bird WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILLS!
Yesterday (2/18) we went to Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie, hoping to find the White-winged Crossbills that had been hanging out there. Jeff Bilsky, Tom Lally, Audrey Carl, and myself searched for over 2 hours with no luck. However, I did pick up two new year birds:
(80.) Yellow-rumped Warbler
(81.) Cedar Waxwing
The next morning on February 19, I got a text saying that the White-winged Crossbills were still at Memorial Park! We rushed over there and looked around for about half an hour to no avail. Then, when we walked back to where everybody's cars were, I realized everyone was gone. I looked around for a little bit and finally found them, with their lenses pointed up at a spruce. I could hear tons of redpolls calling from that spruce, and I assumed the crossbills were in there. I raised my binoculars and the first bird I set eyes on was a beautiful male White-winged Crossbill! I counted the rest of the flock, and came up with 12 crossbills! I set up my tripod and snapped some pictures of them. I could only find 2 females, the rest were males. I also got great footage of a male eating a spruce cone. Finally! I was so excited. Year bird #82 and life bird #265!
Comments
Congrats! It gets harder and harder to get life birds as totals go higher, so it is always a thrill. William
Way to go, 265 us quite a few, I'm only at 76 but my goal is 100 by the end of the summer. (It's not that impressive but I have only been Really into birding for about 6 months.)
thanks! My guess is you'll be at 120 by the end of the summer, at the peak of migration season in may you usually get a ton of new birds.
Also, little side note on this: I just had 25 White-winged Crossbills in my yard today! Also had a Killdeer fly over the house and got 2 Northern Shovelers, putting me at 87 for the year!
Nice, Having a new yard bird is always fun, I hope that they stay. When I saw a few brown creepers in my yard they just moved on.
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