More Video of Ted and a WRI Surprise - UPDATE February 18, 2022
I was glad to see this good 8½-minute video from "Taught" of Ted sitting in his new straw yesterday afternoon, blinking in the sun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZJM8xGmweMRedpoll male
Redpoll male
I still haven’t seen Pretty Girl or the bobcat lately, but this day started with a different treat. Fresh snow covered everything. I went out onto the second floor deck to feed the birds and was greeted by eleven deer gathering below looking up expectantly. Chickadees, nuthatches, and redpolls gathered on a branch above me. I wondered if more than the usual two chickadees would take food from my hand. Nope. Some of the others fluttered close but didn’t dare to land. Then came the surprise.
A redpoll—the one with the pretty pink breast—landed on my hand and simply began eating. Unlike chickadees that carry each seed to a branch and hold it against the branch with one foot in order to peck at it with the tip of the beak, this redpoll calmly showed me how easily it could grind up a sunflower seed heart using the point near the base of the lower mandible. He’d never been near me. Yet he was suddenly unafraid.
Redpolls are known for being trusting, and I’d figured their willingness to trust varies with individuals like it does with bears, but I never could tell one redpoll from another. This male, however, was recognizable, and I’d seen him among the calm few that did not suddenly fly off with the flock when a woodpecker, blue jay, or red squirrel came too close. He was among the few that remained in place looking alert for a few seconds before going back to eating. It made sense that he was more likely to land on a hand like that.
After a few minutes with him eating on my hand, I was cold and wondered if I could set him down. To my surprise, he just kept eating as I slowly moved my hand a couple feet over to the snow that covered their usual feeding spot outside my window. He finally flew up to a branch when I tilted my hand to dump a few seeds for him. I then spread some seeds, threw food to the deer, and sat down at my desk. A final surprise was the pink male eating the seeds he’d seen me drop for him. I clicked the camera as he showed me again how he holds a seed in the base of his beak to break it up with the sharp point there.
Thank you for all you do,
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
