Morning folks,

Apologies for the late posting; I’ve had a quite a bit of catching up to do after yesterday’s snowy interruption to proceedings.

It must have been a cold night as the snow underfoot is very crunchy and there are patches of ice in the car park & around the feeding station.

We had an infrequent winter visitor to one of our niger feeders this morning in the form of a Lesser Redpoll. These small finches (not to be confused with their larger, paler cousins the Mealy Redpoll) are often seen in flocks, sometimes mixed in with siskins. This individual however, appeared to be flying solo.

Redpolls, as the name suggests, have a distinctive red forehead, a small black bib and streaking on their flanks. I could tell from the redness of the upper chest which contrasted beautifully with the pale underparts, that it was a male already in his breeding plumage.

Despite being a widespread breeding species throughout much of the UK, the Lesser Redpoll is regarded as a Red List bird due to a significant decline in the breeding population in recent years.

On the still largely frozen loch I counted 9 Goldeneye, 3 Canada Geese and a Mute Swan.

Have a good day,

Jonathan