[cobirds] Hoary Redpoll(s), Larimer 2/20/13

Folks,

This afternoon before the storm, I visited the Museum of Discovery in Ft Collins where around 70 redpolls continue. I saw one male Hoary Redpoll, and two other possible Hoaries in about an hour and a half. The variation between individual redpolls at the museum is really striking, and I couldn't help but compare them to the 5 subspecies of juncos present: while the redpolls represent 2 species (ostensibly;)), the juncos represent only one (again, ostensibly). However, most of the time (and I say most of the time because juncos can be funky, I saw some weird ones today) we have no problem identifying juncos to subspecies, but as COBirders have seen this year redpolls are quite difficult to separate to species. [Whether there are in fact two species is not apropos of this post:)] In any case, I had juncos and redpolls both that I could not/would not fully identify. Maybe I'm the only one who finds juncos interesting...Anyway, other interesting things at the museum were an Eastern White-breasted Nuthatch, a Wilson's Snipe, and a Sharpie that disrupted the redpoll show for about 20 minutes.

As with the Rosy-finches at Red Rocks, tomorrow would be a good day to study redpolls at the museum.

Cheers,

Dan Maynard
Boulder, CO
Sent from my iPhone

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