Redpolls

In the eleven years I've been living up here I didn't see a redpoll until last fall.  The redpolls are a small bird, and amazingly some remain in the High Arctic even through our winter.  But even though I'm quite familiar with the two species of them (Hoary and Common) from feeders down south, I'd never seen them around Arctic Bay.

This, however, seems to be a great year for them. Last summer, Travis saw one at Victor Bay. He was able to describe the bird he saw, and pick it out in a field guide.  And although he showed me the area he saw it, my search failed to turn one up. 

Then in the fall, while looking for shorebirds at Uluksan I found a pair of them.  Hoary Redpolls. Then this winter, occasional reports would pop up in the mid-winter of "snow buntings" in the area of the school. I suspected, because the Snow Buntings had long left, that it was redpolls.

Then in January I heard of a small flock of them at Ullisautitalik, and although we heard them on one of our trips there.  We were never able to track them down.

But this spring I've seen them regularly.  I've watched them feeding in grasses near the apartment amongst some Snow Buntings, and through out town, and on trips outside of town.

Here is a photo from yesterday, out at First Bridge, of a pair of (I believe) Common Redpolls.  I'm not 100 percent sure of the ID though.