On Sunday afternoon, two birding friends found Red Crossbills in a pine plantation in White County, Arkansas. This was news. Crossbills are rare in Arkansas, and can be difficult to find even where they aren’t rare. I’ve seen them once in Illinois, once in Wisconsin, and several times in Colorado, but in a lifetime of birding, thirteen sightings isn’t many.
Time out for a bit of background. Red Crossbill is a species (or multiple species—some experts think there may be as many six to ten”types” that should be classified separately) that are uniquely designed to feed on pine cones. The upper and lower mandibles of their bills don’t meet, but instead cross over each other—enabling them to pry cones apart. Here’s a photo of one I took in Colorado to give you the idea.
Because they’re so specifically designed to eat one food, they migrate, not by season, but by availability of pine cones. They can be very common in an area one year and completely absent the next. And occasionally, when there are fewer pine cones than normal in their usual range, the crossbills show up much father south where the cones are plentiful. These movements are called irruptions, and they might happen every three to ten years. Northern Arkansas is pretty close to the southern limit of their wanderings and even in irruption years, only a few are found in the state.
This winter there have been a handful reported around the state. I’ve spent two entire days and parts of a few others walking through pine forests listening for either their harsh call notes or the quiet cracking of pine cones. I really wanted to find some on my own, but I didn’t.
When the report came through on Sunday that a pair were seen in White County, it was too late to make the trip. Besides, I figured they were a “one and done” sighting. So Monday, instead of heading northeast, I headed west. I was two hours from White County at 2:30 in the afternoon—actually walking through a pine woods listening for crossbills— when my friends reported that they’d seen them again in the same spot. I was tempted, but I’d already been out all day and another three-and-a-half hours of driving wasn’t attractive.
But I’m at 298 for my state list (my goal is to get to 300 by the end of the year), and I might not have another chance at Red Crossbills. I headed out on Tuesday morning. The pine plantation where they’ve been seen spreads along a gravel road a few miles east of the town of Bald Knob. I was the only one there when I arrived. The trees are clearly marked with purple paint—Arkansas’s no trespassing sign, so I walked back and forth on the road. After 15 minutes or so, a birder named Dawn, whom I’ve met before, drove up with her two-year-old son. The three of us walked back and forth, chatting and naming the birds we heard. After an hour, I decided to head to the nearby national wildlife refuge for a while, then come back later in the day. Dawn and her son drove further along the road, listening as they went.
I jumped in my car and cut over onto the roadside grass to make a three-point turn. My right front tire suddenly dropped and my car stopped moving forward. I tried to back up, but got nowhere. I attempted to rock my way out, but the car wasn’t budging. I got out to look, and found this.
The ground was saturated, and the only thing keeping me from sinking deeper was that the bottom of my car was resting on the road. I dumped a bunch of gravel in front of and behind my tire for traction, but it didn’t help a bit.
Of course, while I was doing this—and while my binoculars and camera were inside the car—the crossbills flew through the trees, calling. I never saw them, but I knew what they were. I pulled out my phone and recorded them on my birding app. But I had other things on my mind.
Dawn had turned around and was headed back toward me. I asked her if she’d mind getting behind the wheel while I pushed. She was happy to do it, but the car wouldn’t budge. She grabbed a floor mat from her car and tried to put that under my tire, and she even got down on her knees to dig under the wheel with a stick. Nothing helped. I thanked her, and she went on her way, but not before volunteering to come back and get me if I was stuck there for long.
I called a local towing service and explained my predicament. The guy asked if I was on the right or left side of Taylor Road. I explained to him that I was the only car on the entire length of Taylor Road.
About 15 minutes later, he showed up with another guy. Neither of them were at all friendly, or even nice. They hooked up my car and tried to drag it onto the road at an angle. The car moved, but the right front tire wouldn’t come up out of the ditch. The tow truck was actually being dragged down the road until the second guy climbed into the cab and stepped on the brake. Finally the car came out. The guy reluctantly agreed to take a credit card—and when I saw how complicated it was for him, I understood his reluctance. But I didn’t really have an option. I don’t carry $124 in cash around with me.
Yes. $124 for the half hour it takes to tow a car up out of a ditch—and that includes driving to and from the spot. And about 10 minutes of that time was spent paying by credit card. It seemed ridiculously expensive, but at that point, what choice did I have? Apart from asking me the info he needed for payment, I don’t think the two of them said three words to me.
I headed up the road, still planning on birding nearby and coming back. But as soon as I hit the pavement and accelerated, I knew I had another problem. My car had a decided shimmy which got really bad above 40 mph. I figured the way the tow guy had dragged it out of the ditch had messed up the alignment.
Frustrated, I headed back to Conway. It was 70 miles, and I took back roads, never going above 40 mph. My mechanic was happy to take the car but informed me they wouldn’t get to it until Wednesday. My wife picked me up. I spent the rest of the day trying to decide if I would add the crossbills to my Arkansas list based on sound alone.
My car was in the shop all day on Wednesday. In fact, a guy had to stay late to finish it and to be there when I came to pick it up much too late to head back to White County. It cost $97 for a front-end alignment. As I was paying, the guy told me that, even after the alignment, it shimmied. They jacked it up and found tons of mud caked on the tire. They hosed the mud off, and the shimmy was gone. Which makes me wonder if I needed an alignment at all. But I didn’t wonder long because that would be depressing.
The rest of the story.
Storms were predicted on Thursday, but when I got up in the morning and saw that they had been rescheduled for mid-afternoon, I headed back to White County. I parked very close to where I’d parked two days earlier—only much further out onto the road. After an hour of walking up and down, I saw two birds fly into the hickory tree (the one right behind my car in the tow truck photo) and had my crossbills. The male perched quietly while the female gathered some bits of bark. They both then flew off into the pines, never making a sound. It appears that they may be nest building, which has never been positively confirmed to have happened in Arkansas before. I’m glad I saw them, especially after spending $220 plus gas and driving a total of 280 miles.