Listen to the red crossbill
Tip: press play to see the sound's live frequency spectrum in blue over the waveform.
About the red crossbill
The red crossbill is a bird in the family Fringillidae (order Passeriformes). Its conservation status on the IUCN Red List is “least concern”. Adults have a wingspan of about 29 cm and weigh around 3 g.
What does the red crossbill sound like?
Birds produce sound with the syrinx, a vocal organ deep in the chest that can make two independent sounds at once. Songs tend to be long and patterned and are used to hold territory and attract a mate; calls are short signals for contact, alarm and flight.
The recordings here are labelled as call and flight call. Listen for differences in rhythm, pitch and repetition – the spectrum display makes it easy to see whether a sound is a pure whistle (a thin line), a harsh call (a broad band) or a trill (rapid repeated marks).
From Wikipedia
The red crossbill or common crossbill (Loxia curvirostra) is a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae. Crossbills have distinctive mandibles, crossed at the tips, which enable them to extract seeds from conifer cones and other fruits.
Adults are often brightly coloured, with red or orange males and green or yellow females, but there is wide variation in beak size and shape, and call types, leading to different classifications of variants, some of which have been named as subspecies. The species is known as "red crossbill" in North America and "common crossbill" in Europe.
Related birds in the genus Loxia
More from the family Fringillidae
European goldfinch
Carduelis carduelis
Eurasian bullfinch
Pyrrhula pyrrhula
Eurasian chaffinch
Fringilla coelebs
Common linnet
Linaria cannabina
Eurasian siskin
Spinus spinus
Hawfinch
Coccothraustes coccothraustes
European greenfinch
Chloris chloris
Brambling
Fringilla montifringilla
Common rosefinch
Carpodacus erythrinus
Common redpoll
Acanthis flammea
European serin
Serinus serinus
Frequently asked questions
What does a red crossbill sound like?
You can hear 4 recordings of the red crossbill on this page, including its call and flight call. Birds produce sound with the syrinx, a vocal organ deep in the chest that can make two independent sounds at once.
Is the red crossbill endangered?
The IUCN Red List classifies the red crossbill as “least concern”.
What family does the red crossbill belong to?
The red crossbill (Loxia curvirostra) belongs to the family Fringillidae in the order Passeriformes.
Sources & credits
- Call, flight call · Ballochbuie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, United Kingdom by Anthony Wetherhill – CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
- Call · Blue Bell Campground, Custer State Park, South Dakota… by Jonathon Jongsma – CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
- Call · Blue Bell Campground, Custer State Park, South Dakota… by Jonathon Jongsma – CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
- Loxia curvirostra - Red Crossbill by Kendall Wiggins – CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
- Wikidata Q26552 – CC0
- Wikipedia: Red crossbill – CC BY-SA 4.0
- Photo by Luiz Lapa from Oeiras, Portugal – CC BY 2.0