Yellowhammers Visit.


I had this visitor a few weeks ago, but the light was bad and I was unable to identify the species. Luckily my biologist friend was able to forward it to an ornithologist who was so very kind and identified the bird for me. So when yesterday they returned in good light, I knew what I am looking at.

The ornithologist also sent some bad news with the identification. He confirmed my subjective observation that there are significantly fewer birds. Some species are actually becoming rare – the whole genus Carduelis for example (greenfinches, goldfinches, siskins). This winter I have not seen a single specimen of these three species, whereas in previous years greenfinches and siskins came in flocks counting dozens.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full

And yes, we finally had a few cms of snow. This week seems to have been the actual winter, what we had before was merely agonizingly long and dark fall.

Comments

  1. Nightjar says

    All those poses are absolutely adorable and what a beautiful bird too. Those are very rare here and I’ve never seen one. My Emberiza sightings so far are restricted to rock buntings and cirl buntings, and only the latter have been cooperative enough for photos.

    It’s so sad and worrying that insects and birds are declining. I actually can’t say I’ve noticed much, I’ve been seeing more goldfinches, greenfinches and chaffinches than usual and the other day I saw a bullfinch which is a really rare sighting here. Siskins I’ve only heard this year so far, so they are probably fewer. Last autumn I did notice less migratory songbirds, especially willow warblers and pied flycatchers. It seems that overall migratory birds are suffering the most, but that is just my subjective observation, I don’t know if that is really the case.

  2. springa73 says

    Great photos of a beautiful bird.
    It is sad and scary about the declining numbers of many birds (and of course many other living species as well). I was just reading earlier today about a drastic drop in abundance of bumblebees in North America -- different type of animal and different continent, but perhaps the causes are not so different.

  3. dakotagreasemonkey says

    Lessor goldfinches, Gold finches, Siskins, are all down around here as well.
    Honey bees, and bumble bees are also down, The last three years, my Wild American Plum trees have blossomed like crazy, yet I have only 6 or 7 plums actually grow. No Bees! I think the plums I did get were pollinated by bumble bees, or “pollinating flies” which C showed me before..

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