If you feed winter birds as I do, I suspect you’re hosting juncos, house finches, black-capped chickadees, cardinals, blue jays and a variety of woodpecker species. You may not want to get lackadaisical and put the binoculars down too soon. Keep your eyes peeled for some new winter “invaders.”

From the beginning of the hawk migrations around Sept. 1, I regularly check my computer bookmarks to see the daily hawk counts at Bake Oven Knob and Hawk Mountain. They, of course, record the numbers of raptors, but the counters also make notes of other passerine species of interest. I have been pleasantly surprised this year of almost daily sightings of some far northern birds that are finding their way into our neck of the woods. These rather rare birds include: evening grosbeaks, pine siskins, common redpolls, purple finches, and both crossbill species, the red and white-winged.

I’ve been fortunate enough to see the siskins and an evening grosbeak. Common redpolls have been reported around Beltzville State Park, and I’m expecting to glimpse those, too. Pine siskins are the birds you will most likely see around you feeders. They love thistle seeds, and if they find the buffet in your backyard, you may get to enjoy them much of the winter. The siskins are in the finch family and almost identical in size to our goldfinch. Look for their brownish bodies, very striped in appearance, with a patch of yellow on their wings. They have a very narrow pointed beak which helps them extract seeds easily, especially from your thistle feeders.

In the late 1970s, finding evening grosbeaks each year was a given. If they found my feeders, I couldn’t keep them filled with sunflower feeds fast enough. Then they were gone. I saw my first evening grosbeak this November for the first time since 1979. They are gaudily colored, mostly yellow birds with big white wing patches. If you find a flock, you’ll also note that they are also rather vocal. When I last fed a big flock, they appeared rather tame, probably because in the rather sparsely populated spruce forests of Canada many haven’t seen a human.

Common redpolls are similar to house finches but have a red crown. They love feeding on birch catkins and sometimes a flock of 20 or 30 rush into the trees, feed, and a half hour later the whole flock buzzes away. In my younger days when I cross-country skied, I sometimes chased them from weedy fields where they were enjoying the weed seeds.

The red crossbills and white-winged crossbills seldom make the trip across the Canadian border. This year many sightings have been made at the hawk watches. Look for them in spruce trees prying open the cones with their very uniquely “crossed bills.” They insert their bills between a cone’s scales and pry it open to eat the pine seeds.

If you are lucky, and spend some time outdoors with your binoculars, you may find some of these rather infrequent “bird invaders” from the north.

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: Which one of these woodpecker species are you least likely to find in the Times News region? A. downy, B. redheaded, C. red-bellied, D. pileated.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: A merlin was once named the pigeon hawk.

Contact Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com.