Nature Atlas

How Nature Works
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Species

Red crossbill

Birds

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

The red crossbill, called the common crossbill in Europe, is a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae. Its distinctive mandibles cross at the tips, an adaptation that lets it extract seeds from conifer cones and other fruits. Adults are often brightly coloured, with red or orange males and green or yellow females, and wide variation in beak size, shape, and call type has led to different variants being classified as subspecies.

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.