News from Canada: Earlier this fall, when Ron Pittaway and Jean Iron from Ontario issued their annual "finch forecast," they predicted that this winter should produce a decent southward flight of Common Redpolls, Now the latest reports out of Quebec suggest that it could be a really major flight. It's too soon to tell how many of the birds will reach Ohio, but a few have been seen in the Cleveland area already and there could be a lot more on the way. The bird observatory at Tadoussac, Quebec, is on the St. Lawrence River about 150 miles northeast of Quebec City. They conduct counts of migrants there in fall. Birds coming out of the Arctic turn and move southwestward along the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, continuing along the north shore of the wide St. Lawrence River, bringing big concentrations of birds past the observatory. During the last week or so, Tadoussac has recorded more than 125,000 Common Redpolls, including counts of more than 33,000 on Tuesday, October 27, and more than 55,000 on Saturday, October 31. The latter figure probably represents a one-day world record. (On each of these big flight days they identified about 20 Hoary Redpolls, but pointed out that only a fraction of the total redpoll numbers were close enough for certain determination, so the actual number of Hoaries could have been higher.) Although I've had the pleasure of seeing hundreds of redpolls in a day, I can't wrap my mind around the idea of seeing 55 thousand of them! Admittedly, Tadoussac is a long way from Ohio: Almost 750 miles northeast of Cleveland. But these flocks of redpolls were moving toward the southwest, so if even a small percentage of them keep moving in the same direction along the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario, we could wind up with a big (for us) flight of redpolls on the south side of Lake Erie. Based on what I've seen in past years, I would expect most of the early redpoll sightings to be flyover flocks, then birds turning up in prime habitats of brushy fields and woodland edges. When they first arrive out of the Arctic, redpolls often don't seem to have a search image for bird feeders, so often they don't seem to discover our feeders until later in the season - probably following the example of the local goldfinches and other birds to find this food source. So even if this turns out to be an epic flight year, it might be a while before we have the opportunity for really close, detailed studies of these birds. But you might want to bookmark this fine ID page for later reference: Ron Pittaway and Jean Iron have put together photos and information on how to identify redpolls down to the subspecies level, which can be a fun and worthwhile exercise of our powers of observation. Here's the link: http://www.jeaniron.ca/2015/redpollsRP.htm With striking early numbers of Snowy Owls to the northwest of us, and now huge flights of redpolls to the northeast of us, we could be in for an interesting winter here in Ohio! Kenn Kaufman Oak Harbor, OH ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: listserv.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]