Hello MN birders - Matt Young's email got lost in that initial post I did about recording Red Crossbills to determine type. His email is: [email protected]. If you get any recordings, contact him. Otherwise continue posting sightings to MOU.
Good birding! Jesse Ellis Recordings for this species > are sorely needed from the upper Midwest and Great Lakes Region. There’s a > significant influx of birds currently taking place in Minnesota, Michigan, > and > Wisconsin (Kansas too and few in Iowa as well). > > If you don't know, the Red Crossbill complex is made up of 10 different > North American call types. On-going research may prove that some of these > call types are even separate species. Getting audio-recordings is essential > to solving the crossbill riddle. When you get a crossbill recording you (or > I) can run an audiospectrographic analysis to get a signature of the birds > voice, which then can be used to identify the individual (or flock) to call > type. These recordings will help us understand their ecology and > distribution better. Birds can be recorded by video camrecorders with > audio, expensive recording equipment, and even most cell phones now. I can > usually make a spectrogram of even pretty bad cell phone recordings. I > recently was able to easily identify a Type 1 in Tennessee that was > recorded > via cell phone. Pretty amazing. > > If you have been finding Red Crossbills currently or recently, please let > me know. I’d love to run the analysis on anyone’s recordings! > > For a summary of information about Red Crossbill forms, see > http://research.amnh.org/vz/ornithology/crossbills/diagnosis.html > > Also look here for differences in some of the crossbill Types: > > http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/introduction-to%20crossbill-vocalizations > > http://madriverbio.com/wildlife/redcrossbill/ > > Information for your area: As for Types that are most common in the Upper > Great Lakes, they are Types 2, 3, and 10. Types 3 and 10 (these are both > smallish-billed with Type 3 being smallest billed in NA and Type 10 being > the next smallest-billed) are most common in the Pacific Northwest, with > Type 3 most associated with Western Hemlock and Type 10 most associated > with Sitka spruce. However, Type 10 is also the most frequently occurring > Type in the Northeast from Adirondacks of NY to northern Maine and likely > southern Maritimes (often using red and white spruce which isn’t that > different than Sitka spruce). Type 3 is highly irruptive in the east and > often uses spruce and Eastern hemlock. Dietary overlap can be great in the > east, especially when you have very hungry irruptive birds, and it’s not > uncommon to find all types in spruce or even occasionally white pine. With > that said, Robert Payne studied crossbills (1987) in the UP Michigan and > found a > small billed bird to be relatively resident in the Marquette County > Highlands. It would be great to get more information on these birds since > it’s unknown at this time whether Payne’s work involved Type 3 or Type 10 > (I hope to get up there this year to get some recordings). As for the > large-billed Type 2, it is the most widespread type in NA, and can be > fairly common at times in the east (often in red pine and perhaps even Jack > Pine or pitch pine), but is most common in areas of Ponderosa pine in the > west. Of the recent recordings I’ve received so far, I’ve identified Type 3 > and 10 from Wisconsin, and Type 2 in Kansas. > > Thanks in advance for any help, > Matthew A. Young > > > > -- > Jesse Ellis > Post-doctoral Researcher > Dept. of Zoology > University of Wisconsin - Madison > Madison, Dane Co, WI > > > > -- > http://keweenawraptorsurvey.org/ > > Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/theowlranch/ > > > > -- > http://keweenawraptorsurvey.org/ > > Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/theowlranch/ > > > -- Jesse Ellis Post-doctoral Researcher Dept. of Zoology University of Wisconsin - Madison Madison, Dane Co, WI ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
