Common Redpoll: Gift of the Birches

I looked out the window on January 27 to see a pink chickadee dangling in the gray birch. From its behavior, I knew right away what I'd see when I raised the binoculars. A common redpoll!

I was flabbergasted. We've only had redpolls once before in twenty years. What is it with our yard and terrific birds this year?

Blame it on the birches. Phoebe and I sat up in the tower room today and reflected on all the gifts that these simple gray birches have brought us: spring warblers, sapsuckers, Garrett the red-headed woodpecker (who made his home in a dead birch snag); siskins and goldfinches and now this beautiful visitor from the far north.

Hands down, gray birches are the single best bird attractant we have.

Birches are quite simply a year-round smorgasbord for birds. The seed cones persist from late summer through to spring, quietly dispensing food. They leaf out early and are immediately attacked by aphids, caterpillars, loopers, and many other insects, which brings in the spring warblers, tanagers and orioles. Sapsuckers bang holes in them in the fall, and by then the seeds are ripe, and they feed finches all winter. When the seeds fall to the snow the juncos and tree sparrows eat, too.

They're beautiful, emerald green in spring and summer; stark white in winter, rich gold in fall.

They die young and woodpeckers love that, too. You let the snags stand and plant more right beneath them.

Perhaps you would like to know where I get my birches. Try Burgess Nurseries.  This link will take you right to the birch page. They're selling them as Betula papyrifera, white or paper birch, but that's not what you'll get. You'll get gray birches, B. populifolia, and I guarantee you will adore them. And so will the birds in your yard. And the price is right: a little over $2 per tree. 

As we gazed out the meadow I hatched a plan to dot the entire thing with clumps of birches. We could do that.

Lood at the seeds flying out of this cone as the redpoll attacks!

The bird's tiny bill is perfectly suited to extracting them. By its behavior, I could see this redpoll had no idea what bird feeders might be. It has never shown the slightest interest in the niger or sunflower chips that most redpolls eat with gusto. It's a naive bird, probably a young male, born this spring in the firs and spruces of far northern Canada.

Neither did it show the slightest concern about us as we walked right under it and fired away with our cameras.

I feel a special attachment to redpolls, because Bill Thompson III called me up and talked me into painting a cover for Bird Watcher's Digest in the fall of 1990. I didn't want to paint redpolls; I hadn't seen them for several years. But he talked me into it. The painting appeared on the Jan/Feb 1991 issue. By that time, I couldn't wait for him to call me again. 

That was two kids and 22 cover paintings ago.

Thank you for staying around, little redpoll, and letting me remember.