I finally made it up to Briery Branch Gap, on the Virginia-West Virginia border, again.  It’s the only place in Virginia where Red Crossbills are seen regularly.   The last time I came up here, in March, we didn’t see any Crossbills, even though large flocks of them had been seen recently.  Snow covered the ground that day, but the air was warm enough (about 50 degrees), so we figured we’d be fine.  As we started up the trail, a group of huge, noisy, monster trucks came roaring through the six inches of muddy slush and snow carpeting the narrow dirt road.  Well, so much for being dry, but the sun was still shining and it was still warm (relatively), so we kept walking.  As we got up to the campground where the Crossbills usually are, a dark, ominous, storm cloud started to roll in from West Virginia.  The temperature dropped noticeably, and it started to drizzle.  I did my best to ignore these signs, despite faintly remembered warnings about rapidly changing mountain weather.  The further we hiked, the colder it became.  We navigated around huge pockets of mud colored slush covering deep pools of frigid water.  My foot slipped into one of these pot holes.  It started to rain — cold, hard, persistent rain, soaking our long sleeve shirts and threatening to ruin our cameras.  We turned and ran for the car, which was, unfortunately, at least half a mile away.  Both of my feet were numb.  I couldn’t feel them as I ran clumsily down the mountain.  Right as we got to the car, the rain stopped and the sun came out.  The temperature rose twenty degrees and the snow started visibly melting.  I had a hard time believing that just a few minutes ago, we were in the middle of a winter storm.  Looking down at the thick blanket of dark clouds in the valley far below us, though, I could see where the storm had gone.  Needless to say, no Crossbills that day, but I did enjoy seeing interesting high-elevation plants, such as Mountain Fetterbush and Red Spruce, and strange, introduced, exotics, such as Red Pine and Norwegian Spruce.

This time, in April, the snow was all gone.  We got out of the car and ate lunch.  As we were finishing, we heard the distinctive flight call of a Red Crossbill in a large Chestnut Oak just on the other side of the hill.  I tried to find the bird, but ended up walking in a big circle.  Fortunately, my brother spotted a male sitting on top of a little clump of sumac a few feet from us.  It stayed still and let us photograph it for awhile, before flying onto the road right in front of us, to peck at the gravel.   Crossbills are very approachable when they “gravel,” and this one was no exception, as I was able to get within ten feet of it.

Photo credit: Theo Staengl

After the Crossbill flew away, we had a nice, thankfully rain free hike (not that we were so unprepared this time!), up the road for a couple of miles.  We saw the usual high elevation species, like Red-breasted Nuthatch, Black-capped Chickadee, and Common Raven.  There were also many Fox and Chipping sparrows.  When we got back to the car, we heard two Blue-headed Vireos singing.  We quickly found these beautiful birds and enjoyed looking at them until we had to go.