Twitching the Redpoll

This was my first real North Carolina “twitch,” a birding trip with the sole purpose being to see a single anomalous state bird.

In this case it was an easy choice to go after it. Common Redpolls rarely show up in North Carolina and when they do, they don’t often stick around to be seen for very long. Here was one staked out at a bird feeder just 40 minutes west of Durham. Plus Robert Meehan needed a ride.

For etiquette reasons I only took horribly distant photos. To approach a rare bird like this will lead to it instantly flush into the nearest window at deadly speed, or alternatively into the maw of a feral cat or talons of a Sharp-shinned Hawk, robbing fellow twitchers of a potential lifer. So you'll need to use your imagination to its full potential!

Boy I really need to get myself a digi-scoping setup! Mark Kosiewski got some great shots through his scope the following day.

If you squint hard enough you can make out the stubby yellow bill and black chin.

I hope lots of people got to see this bird. It stuck around for a few days, but as far as I can tell it is now officially MIA.

My last pure “twitch” was for a Virginia’s Warbler that showed up 20 minutes outside Providence while I was at Brown some four years ago. It was the first state record and a lifer for me.

Common Redpoll was not a lifer for me. I saw my first redpolls on Stewart Island in New Zealand (of all places!) back in 2009. But it was my 299^th ABA tick and my 247^th NC tick, so I’m rapidly approaching milestones.

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I’ve miraculously survived the month of February in my bird-a-day challenge. But I’ve only got about 7 or 8 easy piedmont birds left, so I’ll probably kick the bucket just before or after Spring Break.

I really should have started one of these last year. My schedule was perfect to make it through 365 species: Three weeks of winter NC birds to start the year -> fly to South America in late January and tick nothing but lifers through early August -> return to NC to get summer residents in the piedmont and coast, then fall migrants through the end of October into November -> surviving through November and December would have been dicey as some winter residents would have been used up from the previous January.

Anywho, at least this way I’ll be setting a low bar to be bested repeatedly in years down the road. The list to date (birds in bold were life or state birds):

01/01/11	Red-breasted Nuthatch
01/02/11	Pine Siskin
1/3/2011	Barred Owl
1/4/2011	American Kestrel
1/5/2011	Ruby-crowned Kinglet
1/6/2011	Purple Finch
1/7/2011	Yellow Rail
1/8/2011	Lark Sparrow
1/9/2011	Piping Plover
1/10/2011	Red-throated Loon
1/11/2011	White-winged Scoter
1/12/2011	Red-tailed Hawk
1/13/2011	Cedar Waxwing
1/14/2011	Eastern Bluebird
1/15/2011	Black Vulture
1/16/2011	Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
1/17/2011	Brown Creeper
1/18/2011	Dark-eyed Junco
1/19/2011	Cooper's Hawk
1/20/2011	Song Sparrow
1/21/2011	House Finch
1/22/2011	Pine Warbler
1/23/2011	Eastern Phoebe
1/24/2011	Field Sparrow
1/25/2011	Hairy Woodpecker
1/26/2011	Canada Goose
1/27/2011	Pileated Woodpecker
1/28/2011	Yellow-rumped Warbler
1/29/2011	Short-eared Owl
1/30/2011	Blue Jay
1/31/2011	Fox Sparrow
2/1/2011	Red-headed Woodpecker
2/2/2011	Rock Pigeon
2/3/2011	Brown-headed Nuthatch
2/4/2011	American Crow
2/5/2011	Mourning Dove
2/6/2011	American Woodcock
2/7/2011	Ring-billed Gull
2/8/2011	Turkey Vulture
2/9/2011	Hermit Thrush
2/10/2011	Golden-crowned Kinglet
2/11/2011	American Robin
2/12/2011	Great Horned Owl
2/13/2011	White-crowned Sparrow
2/14/2011	Great Blue Heron
2/15/2011	European Starling
2/16/2011	American Goldfinch
2/17/2011	Downy Woodpecker
2/18/2011	Tundra Swan
2/19/2011	Dovekie
2/20/2011	Swainson's Hawk
2/21/2011	House Sparrow
2/22/2011	Brown Thrasher
2/23/2011	Eastern Towhee
2/24/2011	Killdeer
2/25/2011	Common Redpoll
2/26/2011	Fish Crow
2/27/2011	White-throated Sparrow
2/28/2011	Red-shouldered Hawk