Friday, January 23, 2009

I'm with the majority!

My lower mandible crosses to the right, just like 75% of all White-winged Crossbills. Only 25% of my friends have a lower bill that crosses to the left. When we pry a seed from the gap between a cone's scale and the inside of the cone, we try to brace our lower mandible toward the bottom of the gap while we push our upper mandible to widen the gap. If this does not expose the seed, we reach our beak farther into the gap and hope we can pull the seed free with our tongue. Sometimes we use our long upper mandible to hook into the seeds to pull them out.

Betcha YOU can't say that!

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