One of the best and most accessible spots for Red Crossbills and a few 
White-winged Crossbills in the 1997-98 winter invasion was the Liberty 
reservoir trailhead on Pine Knob Rd about a mile east of Rt 32, south 
of where 32 crosses Liberty Lake. Since I was in the area anyway, I 
stopped by today. My best bird was my first-of-season Fox Sparrow. I 
heard one Red-breasted Nuthatch. Otherwise it was almost birdless.

A big difference between now and the 97-98 period is that back then 
the white pines there were about as heavy with cones as they could 
possibly be. That was where you'd be seeing the crossbills feeding. 
Now they are virtually empty. I didn't check the Nicodemus road area 
west of the bridge over Liberty lake. That was another major location 
for the crossbills. Nor did I check the end of Oakland Rd, Carroll Co, 
by Liberty Lake where Gene Scarpulla originally discovered them in the 
area. These areas all have lots of white pines like most reservoir 
areas.

On the way home I did stop by Soldier's Delight on the east side of 
the lake, which has mostly Virginia ("scrub") pines. They were pretty 
skimpy on cones too. So this all doesn't look too promising for a 
crossbill invasion. One thing that IS similar this year, is that there 
were much greater numbers of Red-breasted Nuthatches than normal in 
the late-summer and fall period preceding the winter crossbill 
invasion of 97-98. With the pines not looking very inviting to 
crossbills, maybe a Redpoll invasion, such as we had in early 1994, 
would be the thing to hope for.

Steve Sanford
Randallstown, Baltimore County
scartan^at^verizon^dot^net