Recommended is an article from the Anchorage Daily News about a local
naturalist who's banded over 20,000 redpolls in his back yard. Among the
many interesting features is his experience with hoary vs. common
redpolls. He avows that even after tens of thousands of encounters, he
can't tell them reliably apart except in the hand, when he can take
measurements; plumage characters seemingly overlap completely. Among the
first 500 redpolls he banded this year, 71% were determined to be
hoaries! He regards commons and hoaries as conspecific. Find this and
more by entering     "man who loved redpolls"     into a search engine.
Enjoy,
Bill Whan
Columbus

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