Today at 11:50am I encountered a group of 8 or more Red Crossbills at St. Croix State Park working the cones at the tops of a group of red pine trees. Their call seemed to match the type 7 call that I found recorded on iBird Pro. I plan to upload the recording of the calls of these Pine County birds to eBird. The red pines are located along the Group Camp and Equestrian Day-use parking lot. The area is also known as the "All Trail Center." It can be reached by following the park's enterance road off of MN Hwy 48 to the park's headquarters. Then make a left at the stop sign at the headquarters and then make another immediate left which leads to the equestrian area. Most of the birds were in the red pines that run east to west along the edge of the parking lot.
I was just finishing up my weekly survey looking for the Kirtland's warbler (none found) northeast of the park's headquarters when I saw the crossbills. Other birds that I saw that might be of interest were Alder Flycatchers (two birds calling "free beer") and Chestnut-sided and Golden-winged warblers. One of the calling Alder Flycatchers was on the Matthey Lourey State Trail along the north side of the equestrian area. The other birds were seen further north east along the Matthew Lourey trail. Val Landwehr Minneapolis ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
