White-winged Crossbill (Loxia leucoptera)

Observation: This bird hit our window and was on the ground so we put it in a shoe box and we saw that it's beak was crossed. We had never seen anything like that at our bird feeders before. He recovered and flew away.

LEO says: It looks like this may be a male White-wing Crossbill (Loxia leucoptera). We checked The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds, and learned that these are a "medium-sized finch of the boreal forest, the White-winged Crossbill is adapted for extracting seeds from the cones of coniferous trees. It moves large distances between years tracking the cone crop from place to place." The Anchorage Audubon Society, 2010 Christmas Bird Count Species Tally indicates that 35 white winged cross bills were counted. The mean count since 1941 was 111. Only 2 were counted in 2011 and no data available at the website since.

Alaska Science Center Consult: Caroline Van Hemert, Research Wildlife Bilogist writes, "Yes, I agree that it is a male White-winged Crossbill. The beak appears normal for the species. You could also note that - eBird - has reports of locations where the species has been observed, submitted by citizen scientists worldwide." (U.S. Geological Survey)

Resources:

Anchorage Audubon Society – "The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is an organized continent-wide survey that documents every bird seen on a given day from sunrise to sunset."

eBird – A real-time, online checklist program, eBird has revolutionized the way that the birding community reports and accesses information about birds. eBird provides rich data sources for basic information on bird abundance and distribution at a variety of spatial and temporal scales.