Unexpected guests

text and photos : Norma Hubbard  (April 2015)

I’ll admit it; I spend a small fortune on my wild birds. I buy sunflower seeds, peanuts, nyjer seeds, and mixed-seed blends. I’ve purchased a variety of feeders to match the various types of seeds. I even have a heated birdbath (courtesy of Margaret Smith), so that in the winter my birds have warm water! It is expensive, but I can watch the birds for hours on end. I have some birds year-round, but each season brings different feathered friends. I keep a record of what comes when, so I know when to expect most birds, yet occasionally a bird arrives quite unexpectedly. This winter it was the Common Redpoll (Acanthis flammea). The last time they were here was in 2012, so I was quite delighted when a flock arrived at the end of January and stayed until the beginning of March.

Common Redpolls are part of the family Fringillidae, which are finches, so Redpolls are about the same size as a Goldfinch. They are wide-spread all across Canada, but Common Redpolls are far from common in our area. Their summer breeding area is in the north, like Nunavut and Northwest Territories. These tiny birds weigh only 11-20 g, but they can withstand temperatures as low as -50C! They stay warm in large flocks, up to several hundred. I had about 60 birds at one point and that was fun to see, so I can only imagine a flock of hundreds. They also stay warm at night by tunnelling into the snow. According to Cornell, a study has shown that they increase their feather weight by a third during the winter months and that is a lot of down on a little bird.

In nature during the winter months, Redpolls mostly eat birch, willow, alder, spruce, and pine seeds. During the summer months, in addition to grass and flower seeds, they consume plenty of insects and spiders; too bad they don’t live here during that time! They have tiny throat pouches where they can store seeds. These smart little birds, fill their pouches, and then fly to a safer, warmer spot to eat. The throat pouch can temporarily hold about 2 grams. As with most birds, redpolls need to eat about 42% of their body weight each day to survive. In our area, Common Redpolls will come to finch feeders filled with nyjer seed. It was quite a feeding frenzy each day they were here.

Common Redpolls do not breed nor nest here. It is the fe- male who mainly builds the nests. The average clutch is between 2-7 eggs and they may have 1-3 broods a year. As these birds live mostly in areas uninhabited by humans, we do not negatively impact them. Most likely due to this, they are considered a “Least Concern” species on the environmental scale. However, they can die from salmonella infection if we are not careful to provide clean feeders while these unexpected but welcome guests are visiting us.

Source : The Cornell Lab of Ornithology