Notes from Field and Study 



123 



come very near our houses, and seldom 

 then where they could be watched from 

 windows. We could have made little 

 study of them through the winter if we 

 had not used our snowshoes, but with these 

 we went out in all kinds of weather and 

 walking, as our blackened shoes now 

 testify. To own snowshoes merely for the 

 sport would make them almost valueless 

 to me. I am not strong enough to climb 

 winter mountains or take cross-country 

 tramps of many miles, even when snow- 

 shoeing is ideal. Yet, on almost any day, 

 it is a wonderful experience to leave the 

 city streets and walk out into the broad 

 white expanse of such a pasture as ours 

 beside the lake, to thread the narrow- 

 paths of the birch thickets, or follow- 

 broader avenues beneath majestic ever- 

 greens. No tree laden with Christmas 

 trinkets w-as ever so beautiful as these 

 when clothed in glittering ice or feathery 

 snow- piled high on every branch and twig. 



When the last ice-storm continued 

 three whole days, we began to be afraid 

 our Redpolls must be suffering from hun- 

 ger. A walk in the pasture quickly reas- 

 sured us. There were the Redpolls cling- 

 ing to the catkins as merrily as ever; so 

 I suppose they found the under side un- 

 sheeted by the ice, or liked to eat them 

 ice and all. 



My notes for January 22 record that 

 we came upon our bands of iifties gathered 

 into hundreds. The day w-as very windy 

 and they were in a rather sheltered dell. 

 We saw one Chickadee among them, a 

 friend whose absence we had spoken of 

 with mourning all the winter. For two 

 years before the Chickadees made almost 

 daily visits to the basket of crumbs hang- 

 ing on my side porch. We have been told 

 that the Red-breasted Nuthatches drove 

 the Chickadees from Bear Island a few- 

 winters ago. So we have sometimes 

 questioned whether it was not the Redpoll 

 hordes that urged our ow-n familiar friends 

 from their accustomed haunts this year. 

 Toward spring, we found the Chickadees 

 quite numerous again, however, and often 

 right among both Redpolls and Nuthatches 

 in apparent peace and happiness. 



On three or four occasions, we were 

 delighted by discovering Crossbills where 

 we usually saw only Redpolls. The 

 Americans we welcomed as our own small 

 flock, because they were just like the 

 family raised in our neighborhood, judging 

 from our first sight of a single pair in May 

 and then a group (jf si.\ or seven birds 

 appearing in late summer. To be sure, 

 though, there is memory of an undue 

 number of red birds in the summer flock 

 against the theory of family with offspring 

 of our pair so young, but the numbers 

 were about the same in January as in 

 August, and apparently in the same pro- 

 portion. On March 13, a friend who 

 joined our walk to see the Redpolls we 

 had so often mentioned did not behold or 

 hear a single one that day, but was granted 

 a sight to us much rarer. We were at first 

 deceived by the call-notes and simul- 

 taneous twitter so much like the Red- 

 polls', w-hen a flock of more than twenty 

 birds burst from the evergreens and 

 settled on the quarry hillside. Two brilli- 

 ant males of rose-red hue and flashing 

 white on w'ings solved a puzzle that would 

 have been much harder for us if we had 

 continued to gaze only on the backs of 

 immature and females. None of us can 

 ever have a better chance to study White- 

 winged Crossbills. 



These experiences made us search 

 most carefully for other birds among the 

 Redpolls, w-hen we began to hear new 

 trills, in addition to the familiar twitter 

 of four months. As spring was fairly here 

 when the jingle changed, and no more 

 discoveries were made, however long we 

 watched, w-e finally accepted the new song 

 as due to springtime joys in the breasts of 

 our friends of the crimson crown. 



To distinguish Greater Redpolls from 

 Lesser is certainly beyond the pow-er of 

 amateurs. However, two birds found on 

 .\pril 2, away from all the rest of the flock, 

 as it happened, were so very white, so 

 different from hundreds of others studied 

 with equal care, that we think we cannot 

 be mistaken in naming these as "Hoary 

 Redpolls. My friend, who had never 

 heard of such a kind, w-as the first to point 



