By Jim Mitchell.

After many years breeding and exhibiting Gloster canaries the appeal of this variety of canary, for me, had started to wane and I found myself looking for a new challenge within the fancy. At that time I also had a few pairs of Norwich canaries and while my interest in these too was diminishing I felt I should hang on to something to keep my interest in the fancy alive. As with many fanciers British birds have always been one of my favourites and after some thought I decided that the keeping and breeding of Crossbills would provide the challenge for which I was looking. In spite of being told not to touch them, that they were hard to keep alive and even harder to breed I decided to take the plunge. This was back in 1997 and between then and now I’ve had a fair degree of success. Its only recently that I’ve taken to breeding Greenfinches and as such have disposed of my stud of Crossbills. Below is a summery of my experiences with the breed, its not a be all and end all of keeping this species but it may give a few pointers to anyone wishing to take the species.

So where to start, firstly I disposed of my stock of Gloster canaries then started to think about how I was going to convert my shed into something suitable to contain and breed Crossbills. At the same time I made it known amongst my friends that I was keen to purchase suitable stock. By chance a breeder not too far from me was giving up in his effort to breed these birds and by coincidence was keen on Norwich canaries. So contact was made and a swap was agreed. All my Norwich, about ten, were exchanged and two pairs of Crossbills acquired.

My shed was quickly converted, I’d read, in Cage and Aviary Birds, an article by Ron Phillips about the caring and housing of Crossbills and adapted his housing methods to suit myself. Four indoor aviaries were built, each one being 1.5 meters deep, 750cm wide and 2 meters high. The back and side are lined with 15mm ply the roof corrugated alloy lined with twilweld. The front of each aviary is open twilweld the bottom half of which is hinged to allow access.

 Each aviary was filled with Fir and Pine branches, I’d been advised to put plenty of cover into each aviary to allow the birds hiding places while they settled down, in fact these birds are very confiding and while plenty of cover is good in that it allows more choice of branches to chew, it’s not actually required. On the floor of each aviary I threw a bucket of old pine needles and topsoil which I scraped from the ground beneath the pine trees I then covered this with a large amount of pine cones. During the season the branches would need to be replaced and the pine cones changes I’d usually change the pine cones every second month sometimes more regularly and the branches as required, a little at a time. Even with plenty of fresh branches and pine cones it would not stop a bird chewing the aviaries, If you keep crossbills you have to be prepared for a bit of repair work at the end of every season, or you build metal aviaries.

Pairing up crossbills was again straight forward, both cock and hen were introduced to the aviary at the same time, usually during December, by which time the cocks and hens would be calling to each other from adjoining aviaries. I never experienced any aggression from either bird when pairing up in this way. A point to note, before releasing the birds into their breeding aviary I would rub their legs with Benzol Benzoate, this is a solution, acquired from my local vet, which kills leg mite, preventing scaly legs. If you don’t apply this solution the legs can become thick and gnarled and the ring my have to be cut off, in extreme cases I’ve known birds to lose a foot as the ring pressing into the thickened leg prevents blood flow to the claws.

Feeding Crossbills is straight forward I would give my birds a dish of Haiths Greenfinch mix, one of Quicko Crossbill/Hawfinch mix and a third dish of Hemp hung on the twilweld door. These dishes were refreshed each day as was the water dish which was placed on the floor of each aviary. Cuttlefish bone was also always available, attached to the wire using a cable tie. This diet never changed throughout the year, during the breeding season I would occasionally give a dish of soak/sprouted Greenfinch mix but this was rarely taken. Green food was seldom touched, perhaps the root of a Dandelion but again only occasionally. Meal worms were offered, mainly to my Lesser Redpolls which would breed in the same aviaries, occasionally these were taken by the Crossbills but mostly they’d leave them

For nest sites I would use twilweld rolled into a tube and filled with heather, I also used small wooden shelves which I would hook to the wire, crossbills, even when breeding, are very confiding and exposed areas up against the front of the aviaries were often used. To make the nest the birds use twigs as a base and plenty of coconut fibre and canary nesting material, the type you can purchase from most dealers. The nests tend to be bulky when the birds are nesting in January but in later months I’d often notice how flimsy they would build them.

It can be difficult to tell when any bird is about to lay its first egg and especially difficult when the aviary is both small and has lots of cover. For me it was a combination of experience and guess work, if I hadn’t seen the hen for a several days I’d take a look inside the aviary, if she was on a full clutch of eggs I’d call DEFRA giving them the date which I thought the last egg was laid. Fortunately DEFRA was always very quick in getting the rings sent out as often I’d get the dates wrong and chicks would hatch before my rings arrived. As a general rule the eggs would hatch after being incubated for about 12 days, depending on the weather. I always tried to ring chicks at six days of age with JJ sized rings though a day either side wouldn’t be a problem. I’d often read that crossbills could be difficult to ring as the have short stubby legs, I never found this an issue and could ring birds without any trouble in fact I find small species such as Redpolls much more difficult to ring. In my first season I bred five youngsters from two pairs, the following season I had three pairs and bred eight young. In the early days I bred more hens than cocks. In later years it was always many more cocks than hens.

Crossbills feed their chicks well and by 10 days they’ll be feathering up nicely by 20 days they should have left the nest. I occasionally found that the chicks would stay in the nest for quite some time, longer than would be normal, I think this was due to the safety of the nest and being inside there was no predators from which they would need to hide. I tended to leave them to get on with life, the parent birds would find a new nest site and the breeding cycle would start over once more.

In small aviaries young chicks, when they leave the nest, can interfere with the parent birds as they sit on subsequent rounds leading to broken eggs or even newly hatched chicks being thrown from the nest. Each round of youngsters has to be assessed, some can be removed from their parents, allowing the adults to continue breeding while other youngsters need to be left with the parents a little longer, perhaps the adult cock is still giving the occasional feed to the youngsters. Whatever the situation each round is made up of individuals and they have to be treated as such, no one rule applied to all rounds.

As the youngsters grow they can be sexed, or so its said, I always found this a little difficult so would keep all my young birds together even when colour feeding. Of course this would mean any young hens would be ineligible to show but that was of little consequence to me as I rarely showed my birds and when I did it would invariable be cocks. I always found that young cocks coloured up well, I’d often been told that unflighted cocks are of lower colour then adult cocks but I failed to see the difference. When both young and adult cocks were moulted out together and given the same colouring agent they were of equal colour.

Acquiring the right stock is perhaps the most challenging feature of owning Crossbills. I possessed Scottish Crossbills but often, when offered birds for sale, found that they were either common or some continental species though they were offered as being of the Scottish race. As a result I found myself having to pair very closely with the inevitable consequence of lost fertility, strange behavioural activity and aggression. After two very poor breeding seasons during 2007 and 2008 I decided to sell up my stock on Crossbills and move onto another species as mentioned previously .