White-winged Crossbill

About the White-winged Crossbill

The two-barred crossbill or white-winged crossbill (Loxia leucoptera) is a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae. It breeds in the coniferous forests of North America and the Palearctic. The two-barred crossbill was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the crossbills in the genus Loxia and coined the binomial name Loxia leucoptera. Gmelin specified the locality as Hudson Bay and New York. The specific epithet leucoptera is from Ancient Greek leukopteros meaning "white-winged" (leukos means "white" and pteron means "wing"). Gmelin based his account on the "white winged crossbill" that had been described in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his multi-volume work A General Synopsis of Birds. Latham had examined a specimen in the Leverian Museum in London.

Two subspecies are recognised: L. l. bifasciata (Brehm, CL, 1827) – north Europe to east Siberia and northeast China L. l. leucoptera Gmelin, JF, 1789 – Alaska, Canada and north USA The two-barred crossbill is 14.5–17 cm (5.7–6.7 in) in length... Wikipedia →