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
dbmar...@skypoint.com
----- Original Message -----
" <l.schoenb...@comcast.net>
To: <MOU-NET@LISTS.UMN.EDU>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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