A redpoll winter

Common Redpolls, one of the northern finch species making major appearance in Minnesota this winter, are being seen throughout the metro area. They've been seen north of us since late fall, but not this far south in the numbers people have been reporting in the past two or three days. They arrived in our yard Monday, and continued to flock to our feeders Tuesday. We probably had two dozen redpolls on and off from dawn to late afternoon. They were eating black oil sunflower seeds, sunflower chips, and niger thistle seed. Keep an eye on your feeders. Redpolls are cool little birds, emphasis on little. They're a bit smaller than American Goldfinches. The redpoll below was perched on our deck railing, waiting its turn at our new feeder.

We've setup a new feeder on our deck, a three-tube squirrel-proof (so they say) rig we bought at Ace Hardware in Maple Plain. Once the animal is in eating position, the squirrel's weight slides feeder ports closed. Stout wire mesh hopefully will prevent gnawing damage. We've not had a squirrel-proof feeder before because, frankly, I didn't want to pay as much as they cost. This one, however, was $19.95, a price that would be very good without the squirrel feature. In fact, it was a ridiculously low price. We bought two, one as a gift. We bought 50 pounds of black oil seed while we were there, also for $19.95, the lowest price we've paid in years. So, we bought two of those as well, one as a gift.