The Redpolls are Coming! The Redpolls are Coming!

Up until yesterday it seemed as though we were the only birders in the state of Maine whose yard had not been visited by large flocks of Redpolls. These members of the finch family are denizens of the far north; their idea of going south for the winter means migrating to Maine and elsewhere in the northern tier of the U.S. I only saw my first Redpolls in February of 2009 when large flocks came to our feeders. This was before we were living here full-time, so we were just lucky that their visit coincided with our own. From the reports of other birders it seems that Redpolls tend to appear in these parts every other year.

There are two species: Common and Hoary, though they are very difficult to tell apart, and some ornithologists regard them as a single species consisting of two subspecies. The two species--if such they are--travel in mixed flocks, and in 2009 there were quite definitely some Hoarys in with the Commons. The ones that have showed up this year seem to be all Commons, but I wouldn't put money on it.

When I first noticed them yesterday there was a large flock of ~50 birds on the northeast side of the yard, where we have several feeders. As soon as I opened an upstairs window to try to shoot some photos or video, they all took off; in spite trying to move carefully, the window made a "pop" when I first opened it and that was enough to spook the little guys. Some eventually came back, but never in the numbers that I had first seen, or at least not at any time when I was poised to shoot! I did manage to capture quite a bit of footage, but it's only so-so, both in terms of interest and technical quality. I've edited together about 40 seconds of it. This was shot with my still camera, and by the time I edited and saved it to Windows Media format, it's ended up fairly grainy. It's best viewed at the small size rather than full-screen:

Edward Howe Forbush writes of Redpolls: 

They come with the snowflakes out of the dun sky of November and leave as spring approaches...The feeding flocks may be startled by any sudden noise or violent movement. Then they rise and wheel in concert, but after going through their usual evolutions they may return to the very place from which they took flight...The food of the Redpolls while with us consists largely of the seeds of birches and alders and those of common grasses and weeds. At feeding stations they eat greedily the seeds of sunflowers, millet and hemp, also hayseed and rolled oats.

They certainly can be piggy little things, and compete quite assertively with the Chickadees, Goldfinches, and Titmice that are the regulars at our feeders. In any case, they are welcome visitors, and the video clip captures a bit of their peripatetic nature and the way in which even a small flock can seem to swarm over a yard.

Pair o' Pileateds!

I love the view out our home office window. We look out onto our woods, and since the office is on the second floor, and the land slopes away from the house, we have a good view into the upper parts of most of the trees. During migration season it's a great vantage point from which to spot a lot of warblers that might otherwise go undetected. A Cooper's Hawk has on occasion landed in the trees right outside my window, giving me the chance to engage in an eyeball-to-eyeball staring contest with him. In winter, with the leaves off the trees, the visibility is excellent. A couple of feeders hang by the deck that's below my office window, so I get to see a lot of chickadees, nuthatches, titmice, goldfinches, and small woodpeckers on their way to and from the lunch counter.

Late this morning, as I was staring vacantly out the window [an important part of the writing process!] I saw something large in one of the trees about midway between our house and the neighbor's. I grabbed the binoculars that live beside me on my desktop and quickly confirmed that I was seeing what I'd hoped it was--a Pileated Woodpecker! Sally quickly joined me, and it was not long before we realized that there was not one, but two woodpeckers on the same tree!  We've seen and heard Pileateds here before, but very infrequently, and not for some time.

We both ventured downstairs and out onto the deck for a better view. Took awhile to find the birds, but one showed itself again fairly quickly and we got some superb looks as it kept hopping from tree to tree. It worked its way around to the northeast end of the house, near where our suet feeders hang. We were hoping he/she would find the feeders, but no such luck. We never did see the second bird again, though we could hear it hammering.

We hope that they'll come around more often. There are numerous dead trees in the woods, some of which show signs of having been visited by Pileateds in the past. We deliberately do not make any effort to clean up these trees as they serve as food depots for numerous critters.

Our visitor this morning never came close enough for me to get any photos, so I'll have rely on Audubon for an illustration:

Audubon writes fairly extensively of the Pileated in his Ornithological Biography. I quote a small portion of his entry [taken from the site Audubon Images]:

While in the Great Pine Forest of Pennsylvania, of which I have repeatedly spoken, I was surprised to see how differently this bird worked on the bark of different trees, when searching for its food. On the hemlock and spruce, for example, of which the bark is difficult to be detached, it used the bill sideways, hitting the bark in an oblique direction, and proceeding in close parallel lines, so that when, after awhile, a piece of the bark was loosened and broken off by a side stroke, the surface of the trunk appeared as if closely grooved by a carpenter using a gouge. In this manner the Pileated Woodpecker often, in that country, strips the entire trunks of the largest trees. On the contrary, when it attacked any other sort of timber, it pelted at the bark in a straightforward manner, detaching a large piece by a few strokes, and leaving the trunks smooth, no injury having been inflicted upon it by the bill.

We did not have the opportunity today for such extended observation of its working habits. Anyone who has ever encountered a dead tree which a Pileated has dug into in search of lunch cannot help but be impressed with the power of the bird's ability to perform major excavations!

Another of my favorite bird writers, Edward Howe Forbush, also describes the Pileated's ability to wreak havoc on tree bark:

Pileated Woodpeckers are such powerful birds that they can split off large slabs from decaying stumps, strip bushels of bark from dead trees, and chisel out large holes in either sound, dead, or decaying wood. They like to strip the bark from dead pines, spruces, and especially hemlocks. Their size and strength and their long spear-like tongues enable them to penetrate large trees and draw out borers from the very heart of the tree.

Nearly as striking as the bird's power is its voice; its raucous call is said to have been the inspiration for the laugh of Woody Woodpecker in the cartoons, though I find any resemblance between the two to be comparable to that of the imitation fruit flavors of candy to the real thing. I well recall when as a teenager, walking in the woods on the Massachusetts farm on which I grew up, hearing a wild call that sounded for all the world to me like a monkey in the zoo! I gradually worked my way towards the sound, sometimes following it when whatever was making it moved about, and was eventually rewarded with a good look at its source: a large, beautiful Pileated Woodpecker! This experience served to forever imprint the sound on my brain.