The last several weeks have featured an incursion of Red Crossbills into the area that really started to ramp up in July and has only increased since then. The vast majority of the crossbills that have been recorded have turned out to be Type 10's. There are as many as ten different call types in North America and the different types may indeed represent separate species. The various types can be identified by looking at a spectrogram of their calls. There are a number of individuals studying this interesting complex and you can add data by recording any Red Crossbills you hear and posting the recordings to an eBird list. More details on the various Types of Red Crossbills can be found at the following links:
North American Red Crossbill Types
Red Crossbill call types (tips on documentation plus lots of other info)
I have been running across Red Crossbills at various spots in the hill towns to the west of the Connecticut River and especially in areas around Quabbin (including right at the house) for a couple months now. As my sightings have increased lately I decided to spend the last few days concentrating on some areas in the Quabbin area to track down and get recordings of as many as I could
On Saturday I travelled up to Pelham and checked a few spots including walking the length of the Gate 8 road (no parking allowed so walking it is the only way to cover all the areas). I was rewarded with several groups of Red Crossbills flying over during the very warm and humid morning. At a small marsh just outside the boundaries of Quabbin I heard a couple individuals that sounded different then all the Type 10's I have been hearing. Tim was able to confirm that the different sounding birds were Type 1 Red Crossbills. The Type 1's I had are the first ones I have ever had in Hampshire County (I have had several on Prescott Peninsula in previous years). In eBird there are just a couple of records for the county ever (Williamsburg and Southampton) and both in 2020. I have now had three Types in Hampshire County (Type 1, Type 2 and Type 10) and a total of five Types ever (Type 3 and Type 5 in the western United States).
Today I once again visited a number of sites in Pelham and added several more recordings that all turned out to be Type 10 plus I got some fantastic looks of both adults and juveniles and got photos and video that can be found in the following eBird list.
As mentioned above almost all the reports (at least those with audio) have turned out to be Type 10 but there have been a few other Types around in low numbers.
Type 1 - first record for the valley this year were the two I recorded on Saturday in Pelham. The only other records I could find for the year in western end of the state were out in Berkshire County and included an early May record of a single individual and four in mid July.
Type 2 -one was recorded in Williamsburg in late March and the only other ones have recently shown up in a couple areas of Pelham with up to half a dozen present from late July until early August.
Besides the crossbills there has been a noticeable incursion of Red breasted Nuthatches that started a few months ago and continues. The species breeds in the area but I started noticing them in areas I don't typically find them during the summer. Other reports and eBird data does indeed support my thoughts that the species is around in greater than typical numbers. It will be interesting to see what the fall season brings with this species too.
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