Funny how yesterday I still had a lot of Redpolls and now today there only
has been a hand full or so. Even though it's hard to know or prove I also
think that from day to day there seemed to be different groups of Redpolls
coming in which makes you wonder how many millions of Redpolls there were
this winter. As for Hoaries it was almost maddening trying to identify
them. If it wasn't a classic frosty white Hoary it was almost impossible to
know if I was IDing them right. I don't think I have ever taken so many
pictures of redpolls that I thought were Hoaries and then later looked at
the pictures and decided that they weren't hoaries and deleted them. Now
I'm wishing I hadn't deleted them since I'm second guessing myself. Like
Denny said it might of been a once in a lifetime experience.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dennis and Barbara Martin" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 11:55 AM
Subject: Re: [mou-net] Common Redpolls
I would expect them to be leaving fairly soon. Historically I have never
seen redpolls anywhere in Minnesota in the month of May, although I believe
that a few others have seen them that late on occasion. Someone else
should chime in on that point.
The question is what the size of this years irruption will have on some
birds staying late. I still have over 130 redpolls at my feeders as of
this AM. That is considerably down from the peak counts of a month or two
ago. My peak count at any one time was a conservative 530 birds. That
only occurred once. Most other peak counts this year were in the 200 plus
range. Compare that to past years peak counts. Never had we seen more
that 62 redpolls at once in past years.
By the way we have not had a problem with dying birds at our feeders. All
winter we have practiced very clean practices. Feeders are washed and
disinfected on a regular rotating basis and the ground under the feeders
has been kept fairly clean. Most of our feeders have trays which were
cleaned on a nightly basis thus eliminating severe ground contamination.
The local Coopers Hawk which returned in the past 2-3 weeks has been more
of a problem, along with the Sharp-shinned who was here in January for a
few days.
We haven't figured out exactly how much seed we went through this winter
I do know that I was buying Niger seed and sunflower chips 100 pounds of
each at a time. And that occurred several times. And that got tiring.
But the chance to study that many redpolls and their plumage variations
was probably a once in a lifetime experience. Even the degree of
variation in probable hoaries was rather interesting Only two true
hoaries were seen but at least a half dozen other possible hoaries were
studied for several days at a time.
By the way we believe that there is a constant turnover in the birds
visiting the feeders. On more that one occasion we would see a bird with
a distinctive form of albinism that would only be present for a few days
throughout the period.
Denny
Dennis and Barbara Martin
Shorewood, MN
[email protected]
----- Original Message -----
" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>From: "Lynne Schoenborn
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 8:35 AM
Subject: [mou-net] Common Redpolls
I still have many Common Redpolls coming to the feeders in my New Hope
yard. Does anyone know how long I can expect them to stay?
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