White-winged Crossbill
Monhegan Island, Maine
In the Black Spruce forests Down East, you often hear White-winged Crossbills before you see them—if you see them at all. They’re almost always in a small flock, restless and vocal: their calls sound like a gang of kittens, fuzzy and prickly at the same time. I had been hearing but not seeing this group for some time, when suddenly they were there: talking and feeding, in the sunlit branches where the trees met the ocean behind us.