I was pleasantly surprised to be visited by a flock of four redpolls while hiking in Crow-Hassan Park Reserve (near Rogers). I only had time to look at the closest bird to me, which happened to have a noticeably short and stubby bill, limited streaks on the side, and no markings on its undertail coverts. I managed to get one lousy photo where you can clearly see the bill, sides, and a little bit of the undertail coverts. I just uploaded the photo on to MOU's "Recently Seen" page: http://www.moumn.org/cgi-bin/recent.pl.
The flock landed in a small tree around 3:50pm and only stayed for 20 seconds or so before flying off again. This was on Trail 11, and the tree was approximately 200 feet east of the Trail 11 and 12 intersection. The flock flew in from the north and flew northward again when I last saw them. The only other birds of note were ~30 Trumpeter Swans in the area, hundreds of Canada Geese, and a pair of scaup (species unknown) on Lake Sylvan. Good birding! Alyssa DeRubeis Golden Valley, Hennepin Co. ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
