TWO BARRED CROSSBILL IRRUPTIONS - In June 2013 there were reports of up to 50,000 two-barred crossbills irrupting from West Siberian
forests and vast numbers entered Scandinavia in late June 2013, the UK was
set for a bonanza of this trumpet-blowing finch. The birds started hitting the east coast in July 2013. Prior to that the last invasion of Two-barred Crossbills into Britain happened in 2008, which I missed!
I was in Spain this summer and of course I missed this invasion too! However there are still pockets of them about in the UK and today I set out to find the flock in the Forest of Dean.
Up to 18 of these brightly coloured beauties have been feeding on larch cones in this large forest for the last few weeks, I arrived at the site at 8:30am. it was cold, very dull and overcast, with showers of drizzling rain, how nice!
After walking for an hour or so I hadn't seen a single Common Crossbill let alone one with bars! I did find a flock of chaffinches with several Bramblings, also a few Marsh Tits, Goldcrest, Fieldfare, Great spotted Woodpecker and Eurasian Nuthatch.
I met up with two other birders and collectively we had not seen a single crossbill. It was now approaching 11am and I was told by my friend Nigel that these birds always show around 11am.
Moments later we were watching a flock of 15 Common Crossbills and then, dead on 11am a flock of five TWO-BARRED CROSSBILLS dropped into a tree right next to us. Wow, what a beauty, four of them were males, they flew off and another group of five males dropped in, superb. The light was so bad, I used an ISO setting of 800 and still only got 1/60th second shutter speed, no wonder my pictures were so bad!
AT LAST I CAUGHT UP WITH THIS BOGEY BIRD AFTER YEARS OF FRUSTRATION.- HERE ARE SOME VERY BAD RECORD SHOTS BUT IT WAS VERY DARK, WINDY AND WET WHEN I GOT THERE
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