It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I’ll get around to the reason for that in a later post. In any event, despite the distractions I’ve been trying to see as many birds as possible.

My last two early visits to the lakefront before work, Friday and on Thursday the week before, I encountered a small group of Common Redpolls foraging in the shrubs in front of the Chicago Yacht Club.

I went down to the same spot a few times later in the day and they were not around, so this is perhaps where they have been spending the night and hang out for breakfast, traveling to other spots during the day.

I rarely get to see these birds, but this winter there has been quite an irruption of them, so I did get to see them at the Botanic Gardens a couple months ago. To stumble upon a small group of them on my lakefront haunt is all the more special.

The second time around they seemed to recognize me.