Loxia curvirostra
Silhouette: Emma Hughes · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~40% in a week ~60%
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 |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Red Crossbill sighting in Jiuzhaigou National Park on a given day, based on 19 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 58th most-seen of the 131 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 40%, and over a week to about 60%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May
In that month about 40% of wildlife watchers report a Red Crossbill in Jiuzhaigou National Park on a given day, against about 10% in June to December, the lowest months. That is one of Jiuzhaigou National Park's wettest months, with about 150 mm of rain against 15 mm in December. January to March have too few records to rate.
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.
17th of 53
Of the 53 parks where we can rate Red Crossbill sightings, Jiuzhaigou National Park ranks 17th at about 10%. The best odds are in Tatra National Park (Slovakia, about 40%), Pacific Rim National Park Reserve (Canada, about 40%) and Aigüestortes National Park (Spain, about 30%).
Same family: Fringillidae
The closest relatives of the Red Crossbill that you can see in Jiuzhaigou National Park (family Fringillidae, Finches, Euphonias, and Allies) are Chinese White-browed Rosefinch (about 50%), Gray-headed Bullfinch (about 50%) and Himalayan Beautiful Rosefinch (about 20%), 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 Jiuzhaigou National Park (19 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), 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.
