The 2026-27 Winter Finch Forecast: What a Boreal Crop Failure Means for Feeders
Every autumn a scattered network of birders, foresters and biologists walks the boreal forest counting cones and berries, and one of them turns the result into the most eagerly read page in North American birding. The Winter Finch Forecast, published on 27 September in its twenty-eighth year, does one useful thing: it says which northern finches are likely to come south this winter, and where, before they do.
What an irruption actually is
Winter finches — crossbills, redpolls, siskins, grosbeaks and their relatives — do not migrate on a calendar. They move when the food runs out. For most of the year they live in the boreal forest on spruce, pine and birch seed, and in a good crop year there is no reason to leave. When the crop fails across a wide area, thousands of birds spill south out of the forest: an irruption. In the winter of 2020-21 that pattern produced what birders still call a superflight, with several species moving at once into the United States.
This year's crop map
The count found a split boreal. Crops are good in the east, from central Ontario to the Maritimes and down into the northeastern United States, and good again in the far west from British Columbia to Alaska. The middle is the problem: seed crops are poor across the central boreal from western Manitoba to Alberta, and there has been a widespread cone failure on limber, whitebark, pinyon and ponderosa pines in the interior mountain west. Mountain-ash berries, the winter staple of grosbeaks and waxwings, are good over most of the boreal but poorer in the centre. Spruce budworm outbreaks have again been widespread from Ontario eastward, which is good news for evening grosbeaks, purple finches and pine siskins: they feed on the caterpillars in summer, and their numbers have risen since the outbreaks began.
The forecast's conclusion is that finches will move, and that this will be a woods winter rather than a feeder winter. Birds pushed out of the central boreal will find plenty to eat in the healthy conifer forests of the northeast, so many will stay among the trees instead of queueing at garden feeders. For the southeastern states, the forecast expects no significant irruption of any finch.
Species by species
Pine Grosbeak. Little movement expected. A solid American mountain-ash crop across much of the boreal should hold most birds north, though small numbers may appear in the usual parts of southeastern Canada and the border states. Wandering individuals look for European mountain-ash berries and small ornamental crabapples, often in towns. At feeders they want black oil sunflower seed on a platform or hopper.
Purple Finch. The budworm outbreaks across eastern Canada have been good to this species, and it has now moved south in two consecutive winters. Expect birds through eastern Canada, the Great Lakes and the northeast, working spruce, eastern white pine and mountain-ash; a flight reaching the Mid-Atlantic would be late-developing and small, because the food further north is abundant. Identification is where people go wrong: males are raspberry-coloured and streak-free, where male House Finches are streaky and duller, and female Purple Finches show two white stripes on the face that female House Finches lack.
Redpoll. Birch crops are mixed, but parts of Quebec and the Maritimes look good enough to hold most birds north, with a small to modest irruption possible around the western Great Lakes and the border. This is a species that has become harder to predict in the last fifteen to twenty years, and one theory is that with less snow on the ground, redpolls increasingly stop short and feed on weed seeds in Canadian fields rather than continuing south. Note too that Common, Hoary and Lesser Redpoll were lumped into a single species, Redpoll, in 2024, so old records of hoary redpolls now describe pale individuals inside a larger flock. Watch birches, weedy fields, and Nyjer or sunflower at feeders.
Red Crossbill. The most interesting bird this year. A widespread pine failure in the interior mountain west has sent Type 2 Red Crossbills moving west to east since July and August, and both Hawk Ridge in Minnesota and Whitefish Point in Michigan have reported above-normal numbers. The last time this happened, in 2023-24, was also the last good eastern white pine crop. Type 12 birds should dominate in the northeast, with a mixture around Algonquin. As the winter goes on, expect more Type 2s to push into the northeast, and possibly a late-winter movement down the coast to Long Island, Cape May and Delaware as cones are stripped. The types are almost impossible to separate by eye. They are told apart by flight calls.
White-winged Crossbill. The pendulum has swung back east after most birds wintered in the western boreal last year. An excellent spruce crop in Alaska, parts of British Columbia and again in the east should keep them in the woods.
Pine Siskin and Evening Grosbeak. Both profit from the budworm outbreak, siskins as generalists on birch and alder seed as well, and both are the species most likely to be noticed by people who never go looking for finches. Evening Grosbeaks remain among the fastest-declining land birds in North America, which makes a budworm winter worth watching closely.
And the followers. Three non-finches are covered by the forecast because their movements track the same crops: Blue Jays, Red-breasted Nuthatches and Bohemian Waxwings, the last of these tied directly to the mountain-ash berry crop.
How to find them by ear
Flight calls are the practical tool of a finch winter, because most of these birds are seen as shapes crossing a gap in the canopy, heard long before they are identified. Four calls worth knowing, in the order you are most likely to meet them:
If you are not in North America
The mechanism is the same wherever there is a boreal forest. Bramblings, siskins and redpolls irrupt into western Europe in poor seed years in Scandinavia and Russia, and Bohemian Waxwings follow the rowan crop; the practical advice in Europe is identical — watch berry trees, keep sunflower out, and listen for calls overhead. The forecast is a crop report first and a bird report second, which is what makes it work in any language.
One caution, straight from this year's edition: irruption winters do not always do what the food predicts. Last year siskins and white-winged crossbills simply moved back west across the boreal when conditions there turned out better than expected, and the forecast that had predicted large numbers in the east never quite materialised. A plan, not a promise — which is another way of saying put the feeder out and keep listening.