#crossbills

[uwmspeccoll]

A Relief-Print Feathursday

A woodcut, wood engraving, and several linocuts by Spokane, Washington printer and printmaker W. Gale Mueller (1927-2018) from his Forty Years of Birds 'n Blocks, printed from the original blocks at his Millstone Press in 2009 in an edition of 53 copies. From 1969 to 2009, Mueller and his wife Bonnie sent holiday cards with Gale's original bird prints using several relief print processes. Today we show a few prints from the early years, along with the title page featuring a 2005 wood engraving, a technique Mueller came to prefer after 1986.

Our copy of this book is a gift from our friend Tony Drehfal.

Happy Feathursday!

View more Feathursday posts.

[susanoos-wife]

"Crossbill - Keinen Gafu" Imao Keinen ~ 1892

[meklarian]

Mystery Bird (hybrid??) Red Mountain Park Mesa, Arizona, USA March, 2019

As mentioned here, I've never been able to figure out what this bird is. It seems that the crossbill is not a known mutation for birds that are not already crossbilled, so this has to be a hybrid.

Could it be a Red Crossbill x House Finch? It's got the body of a female red crossbill and the wings of a house finch. I wouldn't think the two species are close enough in the evolutionary tree to be able to produce offspring.

ed: a better guess from @bird-identifier here.

[feather-bone]

Red crossbill ! An odd little birdy with a beak specialized to get into pine cones!

[ID: an illustration of an orange and brown bird with a beak that looks crossed - the tips overlap in a curved shape. It is on a pine brancH with pine cones, on a light blue background. End.]

[jadeseadragon]

Wendy Gold @wendygoldstudios

"This collage art piece is part of the "Off the Map" creative study series by Wendy Gold, pairing vintage ephemera and maps to create unique vignettes."

[antiqueanimals]

Illustrated Sketches of Natural History: Consisting of Descriptions and Engravings of Animals. Second Series. 1864.

Internet Archive

[na-bird-of-the-day]

BOTD: Red Crossbill

Photo: Tom Murray

"These stubby little nomads are often first detected by their hard kip-kip callnotes as they fly overhead in evergreen woods. Red Crossbills in North America are quite variable, from small-billed birds that feed on spruce cones to large-billed ones that specialize on pines. Scientists have long puzzled over how to classify these different forms. New research suggests that there may be as many as eight different full species of Red Crossbills on this continent. Slight differences in callnotes are apparently enough to keep them from mixing, and several kinds may occur in the same area without interbreeding."

- Audubon Field Guide

[blogbirdfeather]

Red Crossbill - Cruza-bico (Loxia curvirostra)

Almada/Portugal (25/01/2022)

[Nikon D500; AF-S Nikkor 500mm F5,6E PF ED VR]