Greenlake Visitors

A later walk than I had planned.  Woke up and decided to try cooking garbanzo beans from scratch (had somehow never done it before.)  Promptly dumped the majority of it down the sink, such is my dexterity lately.  Cooked the few that remained, and set remainder of the dried ones to soak.  All this got me out the door closer to 9 am.  Chose to go the opposite direction from normal, easier to hit a cash machine and a grocery store.  Stopped to observe a lone goose, and thought it strange that it wasn't in a flock (they have been in flocks for months, now) and wondering where all the birds were, there were not many on the lake.  I turned to see a small group of men, gazing upward through large camera lenses.  I looked at the sky and saw nothing.  One mentioned the red on the male birds, and I walked over to ask what they were looking at.

Flocks of Redpoll (a type of finch) in the birch trees.  Once I saw them, and was told what they were, I remembered reading someone's account of seeing them, that it was rare for them to be here (not on the maps at all).  The man who told me, said the closest they usually migrate is the NE corner of the state.  These are Arctic-nesting birds.  I would not have seen them had I gone my usual route.  They were hanging from the birch branches, raining down seeds.  I observed them and tried to capture a picture, feet sinking in the mud, until I was too cold to remain still.  My toes were numb until I went into the store a half-hour later.  Some Red-winged Blackbirds singing, and a few crows following after a man, but the morning belonged to the Redpoll.

Link to All About Birds https://www.allaboutbirds.org/the-redpolls-are-coming-the-redpolls-are-coming-and-siskins-too/

Oh, and in looking at the falcon pictures, it definitely caught a bat.