Kenn and Haans offer good information on red crossbills. Here in Franklin County, we have records for ten months of the year. One specimen, colorfully enough, is “a male shot with a pistol by C. Hinman from a flock of 8-10 in conifers in his Columbus garden” on the intriguing date of 18 June 1878. There is a first Ohio record of a nesting pair in Ross County in April of 1973, and it seems the vanished Holden Arboretum nestling could serve to verify a second confirmed nesting. I remember seeing these birds in 2001, and the locally-exotic ponderosa pines they frequented. As Kenn says, there are probably a number of species of red crossbills, and they separate themselves by call. I don't know of many humans who can do so with confidence, but recordings can be sorted out. Old morphometric techniques don't work: the specimen I mention above was studied by three crossbill experts, and was identified as three different subspecies---pusilla, benti, and neogaea--but this was before the era in which DNA might have helped. OSU has 53 Ohio specimens of this red-billed crossbills, and anyone with the DNA know-how would probably be welcome to identify them for the Ohio list. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]