First Crossbills

Encounters with…Crossbills

“Female hen harrier moving right along the shore!” called a twitcher from the end of the tower.

I had taken my daughter Jennifer to Caerlaverock WWT Reserve, hoping to see a peregrine falcon or a hen harrier.  A warden kindly showed us around, carting a gigantic pair of binoculars that Jennifer, who was about eight at the time, was peering through while we chatted in the main observation tower.

“I can see it!” she called and I turned to see my little girl tracking something through the outsize binoculars, which momentarily seemed as big as she was.

“That’s right, I can see it too!” I shouted, after donning my own binoculars, half in disbelief, to see the ring tailed harrier flapping and gliding across the merse where we had earlier seen deer grazing.

“Well obviously I can’t see it,” said the warden, somewhat disappointed, “because your daughter has got my binoculars.”

That chance hen harrier sighting lead to my first attempt at systematic bird spotting – and the crossbills.

I remembered the beautiful illustrations of crossbills in my rather old Book of British Birds.  They looked almost too exotic to be British Birds at all, the lime green female untypically just as attractive as the gaudy red male.  Could they really be so bright?  Did those weird crossed beaks really work?

The evening after that trip to Caerlaverock, I noticed that the book listed only 500 - 600 UK breeding pairs of hen harriers but the figure for crossbills was 1,000 – 4,000. I reasoned that, if I could see a hen harrier at the very first attempt, it must be possible to see some crossbills if I set my mind to it.

Perhaps I thought it would be easy.  A work colleague had seen a pair of crossbills in the Galloway Forest whilst having a picnic near the Raiders’ Road.  So I took a casual walk or two along the Raiders’ Road and saw - absolutely nothing.

In fact I took several walks in conifer forests with the same result.  There are rather a lot of conifers in South West Scotland!

I read more books and found out that crossbills prefer the very tops of the more mature conifers.  I heard of a mature forest at Craigieburn near Moffat.  Crossbills were listed in the Forestry Commission leaflet as a possible sighting.

I must have walked the forest track there on and off for five years with no result, usually on my sister's birthday, 2nd January.  It was difficult to keep scanning the high treetops at normal rambling pace, and quite literally a pain in the neck.

Once, I saw a fox top the summit of a rise some sixty yards heading my way.  I stayed where I was at the bottom of a hollow without moving or making any kind of sound and, sure enough, he popped over the next little hillock and continued straight towards me.  When he got to a car’s length or so away I actually felt a pang of fear.  Then he saw me and trotted off into the trees.

But I still hadn’t seen a crossbill…

One winter’s day I determined to walk the track from the viewpoint extremely slowly to allow myself time to watch the conifer tops carefully and not miss anything.

I needn’t have bothered!  Half way down the track I heard them – not their song but the tremendous crashing around as they decimated the tops and sent used cones banging down through the branches.

There were about six of them, male and female, working their way through the cones like little parrots, right at the edge of the clearing.  If anything they were even brighter than the pictures in my bird book and I could see how those hefty beaks just shredded the cones.  I watched them for about half an hour in complete awe, only regretting the lack of a camera.  When I decided it was time to go, they were still there.

I’ve never seen a crossbill since and at Craigieburn, I probably never will.  The whole area around the viewpoint has now been heavily deforested and, saddest of all, the place where I met the fox now looks just like a bombsite.

May 2003