We’ve lived in this house for 3 decades, and I’ve never seen this many Common Redpolls visit my winter feeders until now.
These finches are an irruptive species which means they don’t always follow the same pattern each winter. If their food sources in Canada are scarce, they’ll head south. This winter they’ve traveled as far south as northern Illinois.
The last time I saw any Common Redpolls in my backyard was 2018, so I got excited when I spotted 2 of them about 2 weeks ago. Every day more and more showed up and now I have about 50 birds crawling all over the tube feeders each day eating fine sunflower hearts and Nyjer seed.
Common Redpolls have a little throat pouch that lets them store 15% of their body weight in seeds. At the feeders they are rather frantic about shoving food in their mouths because they have that special ability to fill up and then fly off to someplace safe to eat in peace.
These birds have a flashy red patch on their heads, and the males have pretty, pinkish-red breast feathers.