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Date: | Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:10:55 -0400 |
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Kenn and Haans offer good information on red crossbills. Here in
Franklin County, we have records for ten months of the year. One
specimen, colorfully enough, is “a male shot with a pistol by C. Hinman
from a flock of 8-10 in conifers in his Columbus garden” on the
intriguing date of 18 June 1878.
There is a first Ohio record of a nesting pair in Ross County in April
of 1973, and it seems the vanished Holden Arboretum nestling could serve
to verify a second confirmed nesting. I remember seeing these birds in
2001, and the locally-exotic ponderosa pines they frequented.
As Kenn says, there are probably a number of species of red crossbills,
and they separate themselves by call. I don't know of many humans who
can do so with confidence, but recordings can be sorted out. Old
morphometric techniques don't work: the specimen I mention above was
studied by three crossbill experts, and was identified as three
different subspecies---pusilla, benti, and neogaea--but this was before
the era in which DNA might have helped. OSU has 53 Ohio specimens of
this red-billed crossbills, and anyone with the DNA know-how would
probably be welcome to identify them for the Ohio list.
Bill Whan
Columbus
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