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By Root 1309 0

active. But their construction material—the sugar to make them—is already rising up the tree trunks, and in only four more days the sun will cross the celestial equator, and on this, the vernal equinox, the length of the day will become equal to that of the night, marking the official but not the real end of winter. In only one more month the ice here will begin to lose its grip. It has been a winter with much snow, and I can’t resist going out into the winter woods to have a look around and experience winter. But I must choose to experience in order to write, and I decide to try to focus, arbitrarily, to find the nest of a crossbill, a strange bird if there ever was one, in the woods of my camp in Maine.

Here is Wendell Taber’s (in Bent 1968) experience with white-winged crossbills many years ago:

Smoke rises straight in the frosty stillness of an early September morning. Slowly the mist clears to reveal a tiny body of water. Tucked in at the 3, 500-foot level in a region where the tree line is around 4, 500 feet or less, Speck Pond lies nearly surrounded by the steep, towering, coniferous-clad walls of those wild Maine peaks, Mahoosuc and Old Speck. From across the lake comes a white-winged crossbill, then another, and yet another. Others appear, seemingly from nowhere. Soon a small inquiring flock has assembled, calling constantly as if to summon yet more birds. As my companion and I stand a foot apart talking, a brilliant male dashes by at our knees. A bird alights on my friend. Everywhere birds are busily foraging on the ground, gleaning food too minute for us to see. They explore the rock fireplace or pass beneath those long flattened logs that form the retaining wall and bench at the front of the lean-to. Quickly becoming acclimated, they enter the lean-to itself to pry around in the dried balsam needles of the built-up bottom. I have watched birds equally at ease in a long, dark, windowless cabin penetrate into its inner-most recesses. Inquisitively, a resplendent male alights on the top of a log, resting at an angle against the rock wall of the fireplace. While the bird watches us preparing breakfast, the lower end of the log, not 3 feet away, burns merrily. We enjoy the birds while we can; indeed next year there will be no enticing crop of cones, and the birds will have vanished. Somewhere, closer to the west, coastwise, they will have located a new food supply.

I want to focus on crossbills because they are here this year, and that’s a treat. Years go by when the white-winged crossbill (Loxia leucoptera) are absent. John James Audubon (quoted in Stone 1937) wrote at Camden (New Jersey) that in the first week of November 1827, “they are so abundant that I am able to shoot, every day, great numbers out of the flocks that are continually alighting in a copse of Jersey scrub pine, opposite my window.” They were then present in the winter of 1836–1837, and did not reappear until the winter of 1854–1855, when they were reported to be “so tame that they could be killed with stones.” Like the great gray owl, the crossbills are northern birds, and northern animals are commonly tame as they have little experience with humans. They come south only sporadically.

White-winged crossbill.

I remember seeing the crossbills when I was a boy. Undoubtedly they have been back to Maine since then, but it was not until this winter that I first began to think I might finally have a chance of getting intimate contact by actually finding their nest.

Finding a bird’s nest, like making a scientific discovery, often depends upon a good deal of luck. One can increase one’s chances considerably by applying standard methods. First, you have got to make sure the bird occurs in your area. You must then sleuth out its specific habitat. You next identify the breeding season, primarily by listening for singing males. If males are singing, then breeding territories are likely being set up and/or mates are being attracted. The often very specific breeding sites then have to be identified within that habitat. After that, you start