Contributed by Marilyn Bennett
How many of you have ever heard of a Redpoll?
Pretty silly name for a tiny little bird who is only 5 inches long and loves the cold weather.
I decided to do some research on this bird who has been coming to our feeder. I found out that they are called Common Redpolls, as differentiated from the Hoary Redpolls, who is apparently lighter in color. Who comes up with these names?
You might think that just because the bird feeder is right outside my patio door, that I know something about birds. You would be wrong. I have always enjoyed watching birds, but it is my partner, Doug, who sets up the bird feeders, buys bird food, takes pictures of them and checks his birdbook to see exactly what kind of birds are visiting our feeders.
We were pretty familiar with a wide variety of birds at our feeders in Minnesota, but had never seen a redpoll. The past two winters, we have been inundated with swarms of redpolls, and they do come in huge flocks.
They are the northern-most member of the Finch family, all of whom have short, heavy conical beaks to crack seeds. They also eat insects and berries but spend most of their time in trees in the winter where they feed on the seeds found in seedpods of the birch trees.
It turns out that because the summer of 2018 was pretty wet, the birch trees produced lots of seed pods. Apparently, these seeds are the favorite food of the redpolls. I guess they send out scouts to find birch trees. In any case, they quickly descended upon Palmer and discovered our feeder, as our yard is surrounded by birch trees. We are so happy they remembered us from last winter and came back again this year.
It has been crazy watching them on these very windy days. We are hunkering down because of the coronavirus and it is too windy for humans to want to go outside. We stay inside and watch in amazement as these tiny little guys are out there ignoring the wind to get a meal. I have to admit I am a pretty lazy birdwatcher, but we do feed a lot of birds.
I read another interesting thing about the redpolls. Apparently, they will tunnel into the snow on cold nights to stay warm. I haven't seen them do this, but then I am not up at night watching birds. It is my understanding that they spend the winters here and leave in the spring to nest in the Arctic. I never before thought of the Arctic as a good place to nest.
One thing that helps them survive is a pouch within their throat where they can store food for several hours. This allows them to feed rapidly in the open when it is bitterly cold. They can then digest their food later on while resting in a sheltered area.
It has been fun watching the redpolls. Because they come in such large flocks they tend to swarm around our bird feeder, which makes them a very messy bird. It also makes them confused and several of them would fly into our patio door and the kitchen window and knock themselves out.
To save them from killing themselves, we ordered several hawk decals to warn them away. These translucent, ultraviolet decals on the windows are advertised as acting like stop signs. Birds are supposed to see the blue shape and veer off to the side. Well, some of them do and some of them still come crashing into our patio door, good thing they are too tiny to break the glass. Maybe a decal of a cat would work better.
We also have chickadees, downy woodpeckers, nuthatches and an occasional magpie at our feeders. The magpie is too large to perch on the feeder, so he just works at cleaning up some of the seeds that are scattered on our deck.
We really enjoy the redpolls because they come in such large flocks and are a true Alaskan Bird.
Hope all of you out there that are hunkering down find something as interesting to watch as this cool little bird. Stay warm.
One thing that helps them survive is a pouch within their throat where they can store food for several hours and this allows them to feed rapidly in the open when it is bitterly cold. They can then digest their food later on while resting in a sheltered area.
It has been fun watching the redpolls. Because they come in such large flocks they tend to swarm around our bird feeder, which makes them a very messy bird. It also makes them confused and several of them would fly into our patio door and the kitchen window and knock themselves out.
To save them from killing themselves we ordered several hawk decals to warn them away. These translucent ultraviolet decals on the windows are advertised as acting like stop signs. Birds are supposed to see the blue shape and veer off to the side. Well, some of them do and some of them still come crashing into our patio door, good thing they are too tiny to break the glass. Maybe a decal of a cat would work better.
We also have Chickadees, Downy Woodpeckers, Nuthatches and an occasional
Magpie at our feeders. The Magpie is too large to perch on the feeder, so he just works at cleaning up some of the seeds that are scattered on our deck.
We really enjoy the redpolls because they come in such large flocks and are a True
Alaskan Bird.
Hope all of you out there that are hunkering down find something as interesting to watch as this cool little bird. Stay warm.
