East Pole Journal V. II, No.4: Nuthatches

Notice it has a seed in its beak.

 This year I realized an interesting facet of bird behavior. It has been in front of me for as long as I have been coming to the East Pole, I simply never noticed it before. It’s mysterious. 

    Every year Chickadees come to the feeder in significant numbers. Other species show up as individuals or in small groups. It seems though, every year there us kind of a dominating second species, not dominating in physical sense but showing up in numbers only slightly fewer than the Chickadees.

            They two that stand out are common redpolls and Pine Grosbeaks. One year so many redpolls showed up they almost overwhelmed the Chickadees. Other years I don't see any or only one or two at a time. Then there was the year of the Grosbeaks, not large numbers, larger birds and maybe six at a time. Redpolls are known to move around in what are called irruptive migrations. That essentially means they go different places irregularly on their migrations. They have been seen as far south as Nebraska but mostly stick to the North, though gathering in different places each year.

            There was a year when two hairy woodpeckers spent a large part of the winter around the feeder.

This year it’s redbreasted nuthatches. Maybe half a dozen have been coming to the feeder regularly among the Chickadees. I’ve seen them one at a time in previous years, but never more than one. Just had a flash of a thought. Maybe that single visitor was an individual male or female and this past summer another one showed up and the resident found a mate and they raised a family. I've seen a couple of little brown birds I think are either Pine Siskins or Brown Creepers.
Who knows? But I haven’t seen a redpoll or a grosbeak yet.

The invasion of the redpolls

More about Alaska birds