Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Redpolls Visiting from the Boreal Forest



Another long video of the birds at the bird table for those of you who are interested in Birds. A special visitor that only shows up every 6 or 7 years, the Redpoll. The NB bird expert that is on CBC radio once a week, the Shift program I think, recently talked about them. I knew that I only have them at my feeders once every few years but I never knew why. He explained that they are native to the Boreal Forest just south of the Canadian Arctic and normally they would stay there in winter. There natural food is the cones on the White Birch and every six or seven years there aren't very many cones so they come south looking for food. They are almost tame because they aren't used to seeing humans and they love to go to bird feeders. Something else interesting that he said was that they dig themselves a snow cave at night to conserve body heat.