Invasion of the Crossbills

Observation by Mike Brubaker:

Walked out to pick up paper this morning and stopped dead in my tracks when I heard the loud chorus of bird song that was occurring. I used Merlin app to identify songs as white winged cross bills. I then went to take some pictures. I never recall seeing so many song birds before. We had a lot of redpolls and the feeder this winter, but that paled in comparison. They were feeding on the abundant white spruce cones. When my dog Koda ran over, the sound of their wings as they shied sounded like a wave washing up in a sand beach. Amazing.

Comment from Gemini:

This observation of an apparent white-winged crossbill irruption aligns with the previous observation of an abundance of spruce cones in the area on 5/18/2024. White-winged crossbills are known to irrupt, or move outside of their typical range, in response to food availability, as documented in several other observations. The large number of redpolls observed in the area during the winter of 2018-2019 (reported on 1/27/2019), likely also reflects an irruption driven by abundant food sources. As noted in a 2019 article from the Anchorage Daily News, redpolls, like crossbills, rely heavily on tree seeds, particularly birch and alder. https://www.adn.com/alaska-life/wildlife/2019/01/23/invasion-of-redpolls-sends-seeds-flying/. The synchronized life cycles of conifer trees, known as masting, can lead to periodic booms in seed production, as seen in Koyuk, Alaska in 2020 (reported on 7/24/2020), and these events can attract large numbers of seed-eating birds like crossbills.