Redpolls are friendly little winter birds

By Al Lowe
Contributor

Redpolls are sort of dumpy, little sparrow-like birds. They are brownish, streaked on the sides, have fluffy feathers and are distinguished by red caps (Poll is an old English word for top of the head).
Quite a few of the male birds have pink breasts. There are actually two separate species, the Common Redpoll, which is the smaller and darker of the two, and the Hoary Redpoll, larger, and with a distinct greyish or whitish cast. (Hoary is another obsolete English word meaning frosty).
Redpolls breed in the Arctic - completely around the pole. They may stay there all winter, but often drift south if the northern winters are especially severe. Under these conditions they may be seen in Britain, the Scandinavian countries and northern Europe, as well as in southern Canada and the northern U.S. Sometimes they come in very large numbers and sometimes not at all. One year I counted at least 60 at a time at my feeder, another year not a one.
The little Redpolls are members of the sparrow family, and they tend to move around in loose flocks. They fly rapidly and change direction almost instantly. A flock appears to move as one unit, as though the birds were somehow all fastened together. They keep up an incessant twittering as they move or feed. This doesn't really sound all that much like bird-calls, but more like a rustling, or high-pitched chattering sound.
Redpolls are not usually much afraid of people. Perhaps that is just because they don't see many people up where they live, and don't know how mean we can be. Anyway, it is quite normal to be able to walk very close to them providing you don't make any sudden moves. A Mrs. Wetherbee, who used to do a lot of bird banding in her Massachusetts backyard, says that she could often just pick them up without frightening them. Personally, I have never found them to be that tame, but they are certainly not as skittish as many of the wild birds.
In the winter, the natural food of these birds is the seeds and buds of such trees as alders, willows, birches and the like. They are also partial to weed seeds and grass seeds. They are easily attracted to a bird feeder if you use any kind of grain or cracked corn.
The two redpoll species are closely related, as their scientific names indicate - Acanthis horemanni (Hoary) and Acanthis flammae (Common). They both nest either on the ground or in low shrubby trees. They don't seem to establish any private territory, as almost all other birds do. They also have been known to interbreed with each other.
Look for a continuously twittering flock of small birds, anywhere from a dozen to a hundred. If they are little fluffy birds with red caps, they are one of our winter visitors from the far north of the world.