Ecobirder: redpoll

Showing posts with label redpoll. Show all posts

Monday, March 14, 2011

A Day in the Sax Zim Bog

For the past month I have been tyring to get back up to the Sax Zim Bog area to take some pics. I usually try and get up there a couple of times each winter because it is one of the best places around to see some of the species that usually live up in the boreal forests of Canada. I made my first trip up in January for the Brrrrdathon but because of weather and schedule I was not able to make it back up until last week. Since I had a vacation day that I had to burn I decided to take off last Thursday and head north.

The weather on Thursday turned out to be quite nice. Except for some clouds around noon, the skies were pretty clear with temps up into the 20s. My first stop when I arrived was to the feeding station on Admiral Ave. I have always found this to be a great location for finding many of the wintering passerines. On this trip the feeders were dominated number wise by common redpoll. When I was up in January the only place that I found redpolls was at some of the feeders in the Meadowlands but on this trip they seemed to be everywhere. A couple of rare hoary redpolls have also been reported but I did not see any redpoll that appeared like it might be a hoary.

In contrast to the redpoll numbers were the numbers of pine grosbeak. In January there were large numbers of pine grosbeak around the bog. You could find a half dozen or more at almost any feeder in the bog. On this trip however I only spotted a couple females at the Admiral feeder and no other pine grosbeak anywhere else.

There were still a couple of boreal chickadees hanging around the Admiral feeder. They would come in and feed for a little bit and then disappear back into the bog. Forty five minutes to an hour later they would fly back in to the feeders, eat and then disappear again. While I was there I pointed them out to several other people who were looking for them because they were a life bird.

There were also a lot of gray jays at both the Admiral feeders and the feeding station on Arkola. Gray jays are very clever birds and not very afraid of people. On a couple of occasions I was afraid that one of them would fly though my open car window at Arkola.

After the two and a half hour drive and spending a couple hours in the car at the feeders I decided it would be good to get out and stretch my legs. So I put on my boots and headed off in to the woods off of McDavitt Road. This is usually a good place to find black-backed and three-toed woodpeckers. As I walked into the woods I could see signs that there were woodpeckers in the area. Black-backed and three-toed woodpeckers typically peel the bark off of the trees instead of boring holes in the wood like most other woodpeckers do. So I listened for their distinctive peeling sound and found a male bird at work deep in the woods.

It was a lot of work walking through the deep woods and thigh high snow to get the woodpecker pics so I decided to walk along a path for a while. This was fortunate because a little ways down the path I came across a northern hawk owl. Northern hawk owls are one of the few owls that are most active during the day, diurnal. The owl was perched over an area that had recently been used for logging and was probably hunting rodents that lived in the remaining wood piles. Later on I looked for great gray owls in the same area, I saw two on McDavitt in January, but on this trip I did not have any luck with great grays. This might have been because I did not want to stick around too late since I still had a two and a half hour drive to get home.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Wordless Wednesday: Common Redpoll

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Grosbeaks at the Blue Spruce feeder station

My final stop on my day trip to the Sax Zim Bog on Sturdy March first was the feeder station on Blue Spruce Road.

When I arrived it was pretty quiet. This was quite different from the time that I spent here on the Friday of the Sax Zim Winter Birding Festival. On that occasion there were many birds at the feeder station. When I arrived on March first all that I saw where redpolls, which I had already taken some nice shots of off on Owl Ave, and black-capped chickadees.

Every once and a while a woodpecker would drop in to check out the suet feeders, but they were nothing unique. Just hairy and downy woodpeckers like I see all the time around home.

Finally after a little while a group of pine grosbeaks came in to check out the feeders.

The females were the first to arrive.

Followed shortly by several males.

They all stopped and perched on the evergreens surrounding the feeding station for several minutes to check out the situation.

Finally they determined that it was safe and flew over to the feeder station to indulge in the free feast.

I also did spot a boreal chickadee at this feeder but included those pictures in my boreal chickadee post.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Redpolls and Gray Jays at Sax Zim Bog

After I spent quite a bit of time on Admiral Rd and McDavitt Rd photographing three-toed woodpeckers and boreal chickadees I decided to head back over to highway 7 by the sod farm to check for the hawk owl again. I still did not find it so I decided to run over to Blue Spruce Rd to check out the feeding station there. I decided to take the back way so I took Arkola over to Owl Ave. While I was driving down Owl Ave I noticed several small birds flying around on a logging path that lead west from the road, so I turned around to take a look.

As I was parking I saw the reason that there was so much bird activity. Some one had dumped a bunch of seed on the ground, I think that it was black oil sunflower seed but I am not an expert since my small yard is not very advantageous for feeders, yet.

Gathered around the seed were a group of redpolls and black-capped chickadees.

The chickadees where pretty bold and kept eating until I got close, the redpolls would fly up into the safety of the trees any time that I moved and then return for another quick bite while I stood still.

I did not see any of them that looked like a hoary redpoll but they were darting around quite quickly so it was difficult to be sure. Plus I am not all that comfortable in my ability to tell a hoary from a common.

I had to go around the seed pile to get any descent shots because otherwise I would have been shooting straight into the sun. When I got to the other side of the seed I noticed what I believe is the print of a hawk plunging after its prey.

It is a bit hard to see in a photograph but if you look carefully you can see the spread out wings, a somewhat fanned out tail and 2 talon prints. From the prints leading away I am guessing that this hawk was not successful on this hunting trip. I am guessing from the shape of the wings and the size that this was a hawk. Let me know if you think that I am wrong or if you can tell what type of hawk that it is.

While I was photographing the hawk markings a couple of gray jays joined the party. I did not have the right lens on the camera, I needed a wide angle to get a picture of the hawk print, so I needed to run back to the car to get my long lens.

I was able to get a couple of shots off before the jays took off for the shelter of the trees. It was getting late and I still wanted to get to Blue Spruce Road before I had to start the long drive home so I left the chickadees and redpolls to their feast and moved on.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Sax Zim Winter Birding Fest redpoll

Beside grosebeaks there were also a lot of redpolls at the Morse feeder station on Blue Spruce Road.

Redpolls are a small passerine that breed in the Boreal and Tiaga regions.

Their preferred habitat is open coniferous forests and birch thickets.

During the winter, if food is scarce, they will migrate south into southern Canada and the northern United States.

Redpolls are seed eaters. They have poaches in their throats where they can temporarily store seeds so that they can eat them later when they are in a more secure and warm location.

It is funny that right now, up north, it is kind of a rare sighting if the spot a dark-eyed junco but redpolls are quite common

While 150 miles south in the Twin Cities we have loads of juncos and people would be flocking to see any redpoll that might show up.

There are two types of redpolls that have been visiting this feeder station the common redpoll, as pictured above and the hoary redpoll, which is much more rare this far south.

The hoary redpoll is distinguished from the common by it frosty pale appearance. Hoary redpolls also less or no streaking on their undertail coverts. Can you pick out the hoary in the pictures above and below?

I found it pretty hard to tell the difference between the hoary and common. Often how the light was hitting the bird would make you think that it was a hoary when it was really a common. I know that the bird pictured above was a hoary because it was pointed out be Kim Eckert, who is much better at bird identification then I am.

I have also heard that sometimes hoary and common will crossbreed. I am wondering if the bird above may be a hoary, or at least a partial hoary, male.

He appears to be very frosty, extending back all the way through the tail. He also has more white on the secondaries and even though he does have some streaking on the undertail coverts it is minimal and appears to fit what Sibley has defined for a possible hoary. But like I said I have not been very good at telling them apart. So why don't you let me know what you think? Is this a common, hoary or partial redpoll.

If you are like me and need a bit of help deciding here are a couple of posts on hoary identification from David Sibley's blog and from Mike Hendrickson's blog Colder by the Lake.

John Mikes, over at Weekend Shooter, also has some great shots of redpolls that he took this weekend while I sat home with the flue. You should check them out they are very nice.