Redpolls and more…

Monday, February 6th 2017

In true British style, today we’ll start another day by talking about the weather: It was another frosty start, with ice coating the vegetation.

It melted as the day went on, but remained very chilly. However, and moving away from weather, it has been another good day for bird watching, with feathered folk flocking to the feeders! Brambling are still around…

...and the niger seed is popular with siskin and goldfinch…

…as well as redpoll, who can also be seen tidying up seed spilt on the ground. The feeders outside the Field Centre kitchen seem especially popular with these often overlooked little finches.

But look out! We’ve been seeing two species of redpoll! There’s our ‘normal’ redpoll (until recently known as lesser redpolls), but also mealy (or common) redpolls. Mealy redpolls are winter visitors to the UK and are larger and paler. Our ringing team has fitted rings to both species recently, so we can show you a nice comparison – on the left a male (lesser) redpoll, on the right a male mealy redpoll:

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