David Element
Wildlife
Photography and Digital Video Images
_________________________________________________________________ Birds 12 – Bramblings and Red Crossbills
BRAMBLING Fringilla montifringilla (m)
RED CROSSBILL Loxia curvirostra (f)
- Most finches (e.g. Common
Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs,
European Greenfinch Chloris chloris)
demonstrate noticeable sexual dimorphism whereas others (e.g. European Goldfinch Carduelis carduelis) don’t. The
adult birds’ colours are at their brightest during the breeding season. As
may be seen, these low-resolution pictures are quite poor in quality as
they have been scanned from old transparencies. These have been included purely
for illustrative purposes - in the hope that they can be replaced at some
point! The scientific names have been updated to comply with the 2016 British
List.
- Bramblings Fringilla
montifringilla are winter visitors to much of the
British Isles, arriving in variable numbers each year.
- The Red Crossbill
Loxia recurvirostra
is an irruptive species in Britain, with a fluctuating breeding population
holding territories mainly in Scotland. The female shown above was part of
a summer flock of 20 seen at a Surrey nature reserve in very challenging
light conditions. Fortunately the highly specialised feeding apparatus
which gives this species its name is just visible. These confiding birds strip
pine trees of their seeds and they may be detected by the noise of falling
cone fragments (that sound distinctly like raindrops)! Note that the Scottish
Crossbill L. scotica and Parrot
Crossbill L. pytyopsittacus are
distinct species, both are rare, and all three species are difficult to
identify with certainly in the areas where their populations overlap.
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