I went out to the Caesar Creek Visitors Center this morning to seek the
Common Redpoll reported there yesterday by Rick Asamoto and Shaun Eggleston
and readily found it with a helping hand from a nice couple who were already
there.  The bird was coming to the feeder out back.  The people who were
there before me had seen it on the feeder, but every time I saw it it was in
the company of a flock of goldfinches foraging in the detritus on the ground
under the feeder.  The usual drill was that the birds would gather in the
trees above the feeder, then descend to the ground and feed for five to ten
minutes.  Then the whole flock would suddenly fly away.  In about fifteen
minutes the whole process would start again.  I sat through about four
cycles of this.
The redpoll was noticeably larger than the goldfinches.  The most obvious
field mark was the red cap that gives the species its vernacular name.  The
black face, big white wingbar, pinkish-red wash on the breast, and striped
flanks completed the identification.

I took up a position on one of the benches outside.  The birds quickly
became desensitized to my presence and I was able to shoot a bunch of
pictures.  I will put the best of them on my blog tonight.  (URL below in my
sig.)

This wonderful find followed on the heels of a great morning at Hoover
yesterday with my son Hugh, a science writer at the Cornell Laboratory of
Ornithology, looking at the Black-legged Kittiwake.  I fear I have run
through a whole year's worth of luck in the first few days of the year.

An interactive map of the Caesar Creek area can be found
here<http://tinyurl.com/CaesarCreek>
 .

Cheers,

Bob

--
Robert D Powell
Wilmington, OH, USA
[log in to unmask]
http://rdp1710.wordpress.com

Nulla dies sine linea

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