406 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part i 



camp without meeting with flocks of from ten to fifty redpolls. In the morning 

 especially, they kept constantly on the go, flying about from place to place with a 

 continuous medley of chit-chat notes. Later, in the short winter day, they would 

 be less noticeable, and were to be looked for in the thickets of alder and willow, 

 where their presence would be first betrayed by the rustle of pods and dead leaves. 

 * * * On windy days, which were very numerous in the fore part of the winter, 

 one had to look for the redpolls in the most sheltered situations, and sometimes 

 he would fail to find them at all. But the next calm day would bring them out 

 again in full force. 



Tavemer (1934) says the hoary redpoll is the only subspecies of 

 Acanthis hornemanni so far reported for southern Canada. During 

 occasional winters this race occurs in varying numbers with large 

 flocks of the common redpoll, but there is no regularity in its visits. 

 Ludlow Griscom (1949) finds the hoary redpoll a rare winter visitor 

 in the region of Concord, Mass., occurring in marked flight occasional 

 years only. 



Maurice Broun observed hoary redpolls at Hawk Mountain, Pa., in 1956 

 and writes (in litt.): "During the mid-afternoon of 18 March of this 

 year, at the height of the blizzard which struck the Northeast, my wife 

 and I, and my assistant, Alex Nagy, studied four extremely light- 

 colored redpolls that moved restlessly in the lilacs and among the 

 lower limbs of a black birch by Sanctuary headquarters. * * * Three 

 were females. We concluded that these birds could be nothing else 

 than hoarys, for the birds were white as the snow. The next afternoon 

 they returned and again we studied them. * * * Meanwhile we had 

 a flock of 30 or more common redpolls. But the hoarys did not 

 associate with the other redpolls * * * these birds were a distinct 

 homogeneous unit." 



L. E. Hicks (1934) says of a specimen he collected in Ohio on 

 Mar. 16, 1931: "The bird was engaged in feeding in several weedy 

 patches along the margin of an extensive marsh area, a half mile 

 south of the Lake Erie shore. This individual was exceedingly 

 active, darting rapidly back and forth between weedy patches and 

 several fence posts or mounting to some telephone wires or tree tops 

 to emit repeatedly from three to five rapid indescribable notes which 

 recalled at the same time those of both the Purple Finch and the 

 Goldfinch." 



Distribution 



Range. — Alaska, Canadian Arctic, Norway, and U.S.S.R. to northern 

 United States, England, former East Prussia, and Kamchatka. 



Breeding range. — Breeds in northern Sweden, northern Russia, and 

 northern Siberia east to the Chukotski Peninsula, south in eastern 

 Siberia to south central Khabarovskj and in western and northern 

 Alaska (Hooper Bay, Bethel), northern Yukon (La Pierre House), 



