Their Norwegian name means "grey siskin". We call the other ones "green siskin". Neither name really fits all that well. And confusingly, we call Lesser Redpolls "brown siskin" - so when we see flocks of Common Redpolls, all of whom are more brown than grey, we have to study each one carefully in hopes that one of them is brown enough to be the rarer "lesser" cousin ... or sibling, since some now say they're not separate species. Oh well. Not much we can do to change such entrenched names. This one, with his pale face, is probably a Common - another poorly chosen name to my mind.
Anyway, there was a large flock of these, and they were engaging in some rather interesting behaviour that I'll get back to tomorrow. Now off to a meeting at work and some birding on campus. I'll do my browsing this evening.
