Parrot Crossbill (Loxia pytyopsittacus)
About the Parrot Crossbill
The parrot crossbill (Loxia pytyopsittacus) is a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae. It breeds in pine forests in northern and northeastern Europe. The parrot crossbill was formally described in 1793 by the German naturalist Moritz Balthasar Borkhausen under the binomial name Loxia pytyopsittacus. The type locality was designated as Sweden by Ernst Hartert. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. The genus name Loxia is from Ancient Greek loxos meaning "crosswise"; the specific epithet pytyopsittacus combines pitus, pituos meaning "pine" with psittakos meaning "parrot. The crossbills are characterised by the mandibles crossing at their tips, which gives the group its English name.
A real field recording of the Parrot Crossbill. Press play and focus on the rhythm and pitch of each phrase.
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Our streaming copies are mirrored from the original xeno-canto file and transcoded to 96 kbps mono — a modification, so we note it here; the licence for each recording is named in its credit below.
1 recording on this page · licensed CC BY-SA ×1 · mirrored on this server, free for commercial reuse · recorded in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands and elsewhere · xeno-canto lists 918 recordings for this species in total.
Similar species
- Cassia CrossbillLoxia sinesciurisprofile
- Red CrossbillLoxia curvirostrarecording
- Scottish CrossbillLoxia scoticarecording
- Two-barred CrossbillLoxia leucopterarecording
Species grouped by shared genus, family and range.