White-winged crossbill | Loxia leucoptera

Voice

The call differs more clearly from Common Crossbill's than in the other two species, and that helps. The flight call is a dry, rattling, slightly trumpeting chif-chif-chif, higher, more nasal and much less hard than the chip of Common Crossbill, with a rattle reminiscent of a redpoll. Flocks add a soft nasal tweet. The song is the pleasantest sound in the genus: a long, sweet, almost canary-like run of trills, buzzes and clear flourishes, far more musical than the Common's clatter, delivered from a bare top or in a slow song flight. Here too a recording is safest: on a sonogram the rattling flight call separates at once.

Identification

The slimmest and smallest crossbill, with a noticeably lighter bill than the other three. Two broad, pure white bars cross the black wing, and the tertials are tipped white as well, giving a third mark. The male is pink-red to raspberry, the female grey-green with a yellow wash and yellow rump, juveniles grey and finely streaked — but the white bars are there in every plumage.

Confusion species

If the wingbars are seen well there is no problem: none of the other crossbills has them. There are two traps. Juvenile Common Crossbills sometimes show narrow buff wing markings that pass for the real thing at a glance; those are narrow, dirty in colour, and the tertials are not tipped white. And a heavily worn Common Crossbill can show pale feather edges. So look for the combination: two broad pure white bars, white tertial tips, a fine bill and a small, neat build.

Habitat

Northern taiga conifers, with a strong preference for larch, and beyond that spruce forest and the taller pines along raised bogs and river valleys. Outside the breeding range in irruption years it is often found in larch plantation, in parks and arboreta with ornamental larch, and in gardens with large spruces.

Range and movements

Breeds in northern Sweden, northern and eastern Finland and eastward across Russia; the breeding area shifts with the larch seed crop and in Europe is never in the same place two years running. About every five years flocks move west and south-west, reaching Denmark, Germany, Poland, the Low Countries and Britain, sometimes in tens at a time and usually from August onwards. Shetland and the Scottish east coast take the first arrivals.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

In an irruption autumn, find the larches — a larch plantation, an avenue of ornamental larch, an arboretum — and listen for the rattling chif-chif among the ordinary crossbills. Then check every bird individually, because a flock often holds just one. Photograph the spread wing if you can: broad bars plus white tertial tips are the proof; one narrow line is not.

Conservation status

Not globally threatened (IUCN: Least Concern). European numbers can hardly be counted, because the species tracks the larch crop from year to year; there is no sign of a decline. Keeping mixed taiga with larch and spruce is the condition on which it persists.

Scientific name

Loxia leucoptera Gmelin, 1789

Gmelin described the species in 1789 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Loxia was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Loxia comes from Ancient Greek loxos 'crosswise', after the crossed tips of the bill. leucoptera is Greek, from leukos 'white' and pteron 'wing', after the two white wing-bars. The specimen the first description was based on came from Hudson Bay and New York.