BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 299 
ACANTHIS LINARIA (L.). (528.) 
REDPOLL. 
The Redpolls arrive in the principal portions of the State 
about the middle of October, varying somewhat in different 
seasons, and they come to stay, as their persistence through the 
severest of our winters will attest through twenty-eight years 
of my own observations. I have neither yet seen nor heard 
from any considerable section where they were not most 
usually represented, except at Lanesboro, where Dr. Hvoslef 
says: ‘‘One winter I did not see a single one of these birds.” 
Formerly they used to literally swarm about our numerous 
flouring mills in Minneapolis during the severe winter weather, 
but the more pugnacious English Sparrow has driven him back 
to his older, wild haunts on the prairies, and in the open tim- 
ber where the seeds of grasses and weeds are supplied in 
abundance for his food. They are really a very pretty and 
interesting species that contribute more than any other except 
the snow buntings to cheer the long Minnesota winters with 
their restless movements on the wing, and their soft twitter- 
ings in their flights. Mr. Langille, in his beautiful descrip- 
tions of them, says: ‘‘The graceful curves of their undulating 
flight intersect each other at all angles, while here and there 
one seemed to be describing unusually long, sweeping curves 
amidst the dense, moving mass, as if throwing out a challenge 
to its more modest companions. Oru-cru-cru-cru, shru-shru- 
shru-shru, coming in soft, lisping voices from hundreds of 
throats.” 
About the first of April the flocks begin to consolidate and 
fly in wilder swoops, and leave us about the 20th of that 
month, the latest record I have being by Mr. T. S. Roberts’ 
on the 18th, 1875. The somewhat conspicuous dark-crimson 
'on the top of the head, and black patch on the chin leave no 
doubt of its identity to even a casual observer, and should there 
be, the manner of flight alluded to already, and their soft, 
chu-chu-chu note constantly repeated in fight will render it 
certain, for only the notes of the Goldfinch resemble theirs, 
and their plumage is too characteristic to confuse in that re- 
spect. They breed in the northeastern portions of the State, 
in the smaller spruces and other evergreens and the willows 
along the streams, in nests constructed of dry grass, strips of 
fibrous barks, roots, moss, fragments of wasps nests, hair, 
twigs thistledown, feathers, etc., woven artistically into a 
