This 16cm adult bird from the finch family breeds in the spruce forests of North America, where it is known as Red Crossbill, as well as Europe and Asia (58). The Common Crossbill is resident, however it will travel south if their food - seeds of conifers - runs out (58).
The Crossbills are characterised by the mandibles crossing at their tips, which gives the group its English name (58). This feature enables the birds to extract the seeds from pine cones (59).
Adult males tend to be red or orange in colour, and females green or yellow, but there is much variation (58).
Common Crossbills call frequently whilst moving about in the trees, making a high-pitched, metallic sound like glipp-glipp. The song is a series of trills and twitters (59).
An old Christian belief is that the Crossbill acquired its peculiar beak as a result of trying to remove the nails from the hands and feet of Christ when he was on the cross. This incident also accounted for the male bird’s red breast, a story which is also associated with other red-breasted birds such as the robin and goldfinch (59).
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