408 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part t 



alternately wild and delightfully tame. Here is how they impressed 

 Henry David Thoreau (1910), who wrote from Concord on Dec. 11, 

 1855: 



Standing there I am reminded of the incredible phenomenon of small birds in 

 winter, — that ere long amid the cold powdery snow, as it were a fruit of the 

 season, will come twittering a flock of delicate crimson-tinged birds, lesser redpolls, 

 to sport and feed on the seeds and buds now just ripe for them on the sunny 

 side of a wood, shaking down the powdery snow there in their cheerful social 

 feeding, as if it were high midsummer to them. These crimson aerial creatures 

 have wings which would bear them quickly to the regions of summer, but here is 

 all the summer they want. What a rich contrast! tropical colors, crimson breasts, 

 on cold white snow! Such etherealness, such delicacy in their forms, such ripe- 

 ness in their colors, in this stern and barren season! 



The edge of the tundra marks their northern limits, which they 

 penetrate only where coastal driftwood provides substitute nesting 

 sites, as Brandt (1943) reports from the Bering Sea Coast of Alaska. 

 "Back from the driftwood of the coast these birds were not met 

 with," he writes, "until the rolling upland tundra was reached, where 

 occasional patches of stunted gnarled willows grow." Ecologically, 

 then, the common redpoll belongs in the "subalpine" or tundra- 

 coniferous forest ecotone, as Pleske (1928) also makes clear. 



Spring. — In the transition zone the redpoll arrives late and departs 

 early. Except for stray individuals, mid-March sees them leave 

 the more southern regions, and soon thereafter, in years of abundance, 

 the birds often stream northward in large numbers, as emphasized 

 by Farley's (1930) remarkable observation of "tens of thousands" 

 of redpolls moving north across the prairie near Chamberlain, S. Dak., 

 on Mar. 23, 1929, and Richard L. Weaver's (in litt.) experience with 

 "three to four thousand birds" moving up the Connecticut Valley 

 near West Lebanon, N.H., on Mar. 25, 1941, "a continuous stream of 

 birds made up of small flocks of about twenty-five individuals, many 

 of them pausing to bathe in icy pools." 



At Indian House Lake, Quebec, at 56°12' north latitude, in the 

 heart of the semibarrens which is then- home and which I shared 

 with them during a year of military duty, the winter resident popula- 

 tions thins out near the end of March. Though there are signs of 

 movement throughout AprU and May, there is no marked influx. 

 Spring migrants apparently spread out so widely that their arrival 

 is almost imperceptible near the northern limits of the range. At 

 Point Dall, Alaska, however, between 61° and 62° north latitude, 

 Brandt (1943) reports that mixed flocks of common and hoary redpolls 

 arrived on May 16. 



H. Bradford Washburn, Jr., reports by letter finding dead redpolls 

 at 17,700 feet and 18,200 feet near the summit of Mount McKinley 

 in Alaska, on May 31, 1947, and July 10, 1951, respectively. He 



