Loxia curvirostra
Silhouette: Emma Hughes · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~10% in a week ~20%
The red crossbill or common crossbill (Loxia curvirostra) is a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae. Crossbills have distinctive mandibles, crossed at the tips, which enable them to extract seeds from conifer cones and other fruits.
Adults are often brightly coloured, with red or orange males and green or yellow females, but there is wide variation in beak size and shape, and call types, leading to different classifications of variants, some of which have been named as subspecies. The species is known as "red crossbill" in North America and "common crossbill" in Europe.
Crossbills are distinguished by the mandibles crossing at their tips, which gives the group its English name. Using their crossed mandibles for leverage, crossbills are able to efficiently separate the scales of conifer cones and extract the seeds on which they feed. Adult males tend to be red or orange in colour, and females green or yellow, but there is much variation; juveniles are greyish-green and streaked.
The distinctive crossed mandibles eliminate most other species, but this feature is shared by the similar two-barred crossbill, with which it overlaps considerably... Wikipedia →
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Toluca | 🇲🇽 México | |
| 2 | Novosibirsk | 🇷🇺 Russia | |
| 3 | Nizhny Novgorod | 🇷🇺 Russia | |
| 4 | Helsinki | 🇫🇮 Finland | |
| 5 | Busan | 🇰🇷 South Korea | |
| 6 | Kharkiv | 🇺🇦 Ukraine | |
| 7 | Ulaanbaatar | 🇲🇳 Mongolia | |
| 8 | Minsk | 🇧🇾 Belarus | |
| 9 | Moscow | 🇷🇺 Russia | |
| 10 | Madrid | 🇪🇸 Spain |
| # | Zoo / Centre | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zoo Pilsen | 🇨🇿 Czechia | |
| 2 | Zoopark Limpopo | 🇷🇺 Russia | |
| 3 | Alpenzoo Innsbruck | 🇦🇹 Austria |
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report a Red Crossbill sighting in Madrid on a given day, based on 440 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 82nd most-seen of the 196 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 10%, and over a week to about 20%, if each day is a fresh chance.
October to December
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Red Crossbill in Madrid on a given day, against under 5% in January to September, the lowest months. Those are among Madrid's wettest months, with about 55 mm of rain a month against 10 mm in July.
Between 9 am and noon
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Red Crossbill sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
10th of 51
Of the 51 cities where we can rate Red Crossbill sightings, Madrid ranks 10th at under 5%. The best odds are in Toluca (México, about 20%), Novosibirsk (Russia, about 10%) and Nizhny Novgorod (Russia, about 10%).
Same family: Fringillidae
The closest relatives of the Red Crossbill that you can see in Madrid (family Fringillidae, Finches, Euphonias, and Allies) are European Serin (about 60%), Eurasian Goldfinch (about 50%) and European Greenfinch (about 40%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Red Crossbill is recorded against all the birds logged in Madrid (440 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
