Hi all --

We have an explosion of Siskins at our feeders now, they are also enjoying the "water feature" in this dry cold air.

Some thoughts on other winter finches:

I had to drive up to Howard County yesterday and   checked out a number of evergreen stands on the way. Most were White Pine, widely planted but here a bit south of its natural range. As far as I could see, there are essentially NO cones on these pines this year; the usually prolific white pines around our home are also completely cone-less. In the last big Red Crossbill year (1999?), large stands of pines around some of the reservoirs had good cone crops, whch held the birds around. Not sure where to look for them this year...

I fdid find one Loblolly stand which had a moderate crop of cones. This species is of course more common on the Eastern Shore. Might be worth checking. The only large stand of native Virginia Pine I checked had some cones.

Conversely, spruces seems to be loaded with big cone crops. However I didn't find any actual stands of spruce, just the isolated 1-2 trees.  Check ornamental plantings, e.g. Arboretum?

Hemlocks are also loaded with cones, at least around here, which bodes well for White-winged Crossbills. There are a lot of native hemlocks from the Catoctins west, albeit many have been hit hard by wooly adelgid. Probably should be checked out. And recall last year's WW in Silver Spring was feeding on Tulip Poplar cones (as well as Noah Kahn's feeder.) 

It is also worth checking feeders in parks and at nature centers -- one never knows! For example, Barry went by Wheaton Park's Brookside Nature Center yesterday, large numbers of goldfinches at their feeder set-up, no siskins when he was there -- He spoke to the naturalist and went over some of the birds they should watch out for -- Looking at the bird book, she remarked they probably had a Red Crossbill at their feeder last year ("colored like a tanager but in winter..."). Oops! He left our number to call if something like that shows up again...

Good birding,
Gail Mackiernan
Colesville, MD