[Ontbirds]Hoary Redpoll - south Humber River, Toronto

[Chris Kimber]

Hi all, this is more an FYI for other residents of the area of Toronto along
the southern Humber River and vicinity than a twitchable report, but I
thought I would post it anyway in that capacity.  This afternoon, Friday
January 4th, I found 2 female (or 1st basic male?) Hoary Redpolls with a
single female Common Redpoll, coming to my parents' backyard niger feeder.
Given that my parents had only found a single late November Pine Siskin in
such a great redpoll year, when Commons are nearly oannual birds here in
general, I was rather cheered by the presence of any redpolls at all.  My
father obtained a few record shots of HOREs but we were unable to obtain any
of the CORE, which frustrated my efforts to assign it to subspecies, Despite
careful observation I could not observe enough field marks to clinch my gut
identification of Greater Common Redpoll, rather having to be content with
deciding the bird appeared intermediate despite its demonstrably larger size
than the Hoaries.  If my gut is correct, the concept of 3 redpolls in
Toronto without a C. f. flammea among them is rather astonishing to me.

The area where the birds were found is along the E. bank of the Humber River
north of the bridges where Bloor St. and the Bloor subway line cross the
Humber, which is itself just W. of the intersection of Bloor and Jane St.  I
had previously seen a flock of about 20 redpolls for all of 2 seconds flying
across the river from E to W in the area south of Bloor so clearly there are
more than just the 3 individuals in the area, and any feeder observers in
this general area not paying close enough attention to their redpolls
already in such a banner year for the species pair would be well-advised to
do so.

Good birding,

Chris Kimber
Queen's University
Kingston/Toronto, ON