I was intrigued by a report that Denny Granstrand posted yesterday on a nice flock of redpolls near the parking area for Umptanum Falls, Yakima County and the possibility of a hoary redpoll in that flock. I weighed my timing and decided that I could do a quick run up there this morning. I arrived at the parking area at 9:00 and quickly located a sizable flock of redpolls feeding in trees. The flock was estimated at 45 birds from the two times that I saw the entire flock in the sky at once. This flock is a great study in redpolls as there is a wide range of common redpolls ranging from typical dark birds to very pale birds in this flock. After about 15 minutes of scoping the flock I latched on to a candidate Hoary Redpoll that was foraging with its back to me. This bird had extensive white in the coverts and secondaries (especially the coverts). While waiting for this bird to flip upside down to check for the all-important undertail coverts it was nice enough to spread its wings and revealed a whitish gray rump with minimal streaking (very fine streaks restricted to center of the feather and only present in about 8-10 feathers). Very excited now, the bird had to fly.... of course. Took another 10 minutes or so to relocate this bird, this time facing me in the tree. The breast was unstreaked trending to small diffuse streaking on the sides of the breast with considerable buffy coloration of the sides of the breast and the side of the head. The "pol" was smaller that the nearby birds, being more of a small round patch located in the front part of the head. The bill appeared to have the typical stubby pointed bill of a hoary, though this is the feature I got the least looks at. The clincher was that when finally being able to view the undertail coverts it had only a single fine streak on the center undertail covert, well within the range of a hoary. Based on the buffy coloration, I would tend towards calling this a first year bird, probably a female; though sexing can be tough in first year redpolls in my experience.

I was able to watch the bird twice more, though not as good of looks as the first two times. Total observation time of this bird was approximately 2 minutes. The birds eventually flew down Umptanum Creek at 10:10. I tried to get photos of the bird, but was never able to get closer than about 30 yards to the birds.

The location of the bird was a mixed reaction. A hoary redpoll anywhere is a wonderful bird. This was a new Yakima County bird for me, though part of me wishes that since the location was within a mile of the county line for Kittitas, it could have been over that line for my county big year. Hoary Redpoll is a Washington State Review species and I will submit my fieldnotes for this morning to the WBRC.

Scott Downes
downess at charter.net
Yakima WA