Abstract

The range of the Scottish Crossbill Loxia scotica is restricted to north-central Scotland, and extralimital records have historically been assessed by the Scottish Birds Records Committee (SBRC). However, recent research has indicated that using vocalisation – previously considered the most reliable criterion for identi- fication – may no longer be possible. SBRC is now unaware of any plumage, biometric, vocal or genetic criteria that can be used to conclusively identify Scottish Crossbill. The Scottish Crossbill Loxia scotica is the only currently recognised endemic species of bird present in Britain, a classification maintained by the IOC World Bird List v12.1 (Gill et al. 2022) and included in the British List (BOU 2018), although scotica was listed as a subspecies of Common Crossbill L. curvirostra by Shirihai & Svensson (2018). However, we do not comment further on the taxonomic status of Scottish Crossbill in this paper, but focus on its identification through call-types.