|
Chaffinch 18 snow
Chaffinch
Fringilla coelebs
Forest of Dean. February 2009.
Bullfinch 04 bw
Bullfinch
Pyrrhula pyrrhula
(manipulated)
Brambling 08
Brambling 11
Brambling
Fringilla montifringilla
Forest of Dean Arboretum. March
2008.
Mealy Redpoll 08 crop
Mealy Redpoll
Lesser Redpoll 04b
Lesser Redpoll 07
Lesser Redpoll
Common
redpoll
Cardeulis flammea
A few redpoll are year round residents
in the Forest of Dean, but occasionally eruptions of hundreds
of migrants can occur. January 2006 witnessed one
such eruption which I was lucky to witness. These
are very timid and flighty birds so a lot of patience was
required to get them on film. The subspecies, or race,
"Lesser" Redpoll was until recently classed as a species
in its own right. They are nearly always accompanied
by the subspecies "Mealy" Redpoll, but to tell the
difference in the field is quite a challenge.
The top photo is the "Mealy" or "flammeus"
race with a paler buff-grey back, whereas lower photos clearly
show reddish brown wings of the "Lesser" or "cabaret" variety.
Twite 1 (S)
Twite
Cardeulis flavirostris (C) (S)
An easily overlooked finch that breed
on higher ground, typically heather moorland. They
like to perch on fences, as seen here, and often are found
in flocks during winter. This is a breeding bird photographed
in Oban, Scotland.
Greenfinch 06
Greenfinch
A bird that appears to becoming scarcer?
Goldfinch 14 crop
Goldfinch 15
Goldfinch
Carduelis carduelis
Goldfinch are shy birds and it's taken
a few years of patience for me to get good shots of them.
Linnet 16
Linnet Flock 01
Linnet
Acanthis cannabina
This top photo is from the Forest
of Dean in late July. In summer the birds stay in
pairs for breeding. By the winter the linnets congregate
into flocks. The lower photo only captures a small
portion of the total flock of maybe a thousand or more linnets.
Linnets are typically gregarious outside of the breeding
season and congregate in open country. They are often
depicted in bird guides as flocks in the snow but the reality
of this has become very rare. This picture perhaps
captures a memory of those winter flocks.
Also see:
Hawfinch,
Siskin
back to Birds
Gallery
|