Nutty crossbills

During late June 2020, we were fortunate to have three Common Crossbills take up temporary residence in our garden at Bakkasetter, in south mainland Shetland. There were two "yellow" males (as shown above) and a nice streaky young juvenile. As is often the way with crossbills, they were extremely tame, allowing lots of photos to be taken of them.

They frequently visited the garden peanut feeders, and aggressively defended their peanuts from the local House Sparrows and Starlings. Common Crossbills are not renowned for visiting peanut feeders; in fact, it is very unusual behaviour for this species.

The crossbills were joined throughout their stay by at least three Siskins, who also made good use of the Bakkasetter peanuts!