REDCAP—REDPOLL 773 
REDCAP, a local name of the GOLDFINCH. 
REDHEAD, a name often given by gunners to the male of the 
POCHARD and of the WIGEON, as well as in North America to a 
Wooprecker, Melanerpes erythrocephalus. 
REDLEG, in England a common name for the French or Red- 
legged PARTRIDGE (p. 695), Caccabis rufa, and occasionally of the 
REDSHANK (when it is generally used in plural form); but in North 
America said to be applied to the TURNSTONE. 
REDPOLL, a very well-known native of Britain, the Zinota 
rufescens of recent authors, for a long while confounded with the 
Fringilla linaria of Linneus, the Mealy or Stone-Redpoll of English 
bird-catchers, which last is hardly more than an irregular winter- 
visitant to this country, while the former, often called by way of 
distinction the Lesser Redpoll, is resident in Scotland and a great 
part of England, changing its haunts, however, according to the time 
of year, and being moreover subject to much variability in the 
places it affects, without our being able to account for the fact 
otherwise than on the general supposition that the choice is 
influenced by the supply of food, just as with the CrossBILLs, to 
which in several respects the Redpolls have no small affinity. 
Thus this pleasing little bird may be found nesting abundantly, for 
it is of a social disposition, in a locality for perhaps two or three 
seasons in succession, and then may be altogether wanting for 
several years, though this is especially observable of it in the more 
southerly parts of its breeding-range, for in the more northerly it 
exhibits a greater constancy. The Lesser Redpoll is too weil 
known to need description here, for even those who have not had 
the happiness of studying its habits afield, especially in the breeding- 
season (and there are few small birds in this country that afford the 
observer more enjoyment), must have seen it caged scores of times ; 
but the lively colours which glow upon the cock-bird at liberty are 
in confinement lost at the first moult and never resumed, so that. 
the very name Redpoll becomes a misnomer—the top of the head 
changing to dark orange, hardly visible in some lights. The 
geographical range of the Lesser Redpoll is apparently limited to 
Western Europe, and it cannot be confidently said to breed except 
in the British Islands. On the other hand, the Mealy Redpoll, 
which yearly visits us, though in variable numbers, and seems to be 
always distinguishable by its call-note as well as by the “mealy ” 
appearance of its back, is much more widely distributed, breeding 
abundantly throughout northern Scandinavia, though, further to 
white beneath, the male, however, having the throat and breast black. Dr. 
Stejneger (Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1886, p. 615) considers it, with another 
equally scarce species from Japan, to form a separate genus Icotwrus. 
