Mystery bird.

[Darwin.]

I hope I'm in the right place and I hope this works for me. I've been keeping an eye on what birds my feeder is bringing into the garden the last few days, these little fellas showed up this morning and I've never seen them before.

As far as I can tell they're redpolls but I've never heard of redpolls until now, they have a distinctive red patch on the top of their heads and seem to have the right markings but I'm sure someone on here will know better than me.

I wish the picture were clearer but this is the best I could do, you can see the breast on one and the head and wings on the other so it should help.

[ladylottie]

Hi Darwin - yes they are definitely redpolls. I get them here too and I love to see them.

[rustylady]

Certainly look like redpolls to me. Lucky you.

[Darwin.]

I have Redpolls, Chaffinches and bluetits, that's all so far. There was a goldfinch about last year but he hasn't shown up this year and we had a wren that hasn't shown up this year either.

[Verinda]

We have lots of birds here. A couple of years ago one sparrow appeared, I hadn't seen one for years. Now we have a gang of them which is brilliant. We also have a few thrushes and goldfinches, chaffinches, greattits and bluetits. My dad lives next door to us, he has goldcrest wrens in his pine trees. We also have a lot of coaltits, they are my favourite. And starlings nest in our eves.
All our greenfinches have disappeared. Must be that horrible disease they're all catching.

I'd love it if swallows nested on our house. I live in hope.

[Darwin.]

That's a lot of birds Verinda. We have swallows nesting on the front of the house every year, I leave them there but they tried building in the wee porch over the front door and I wont let them, they'd go crazy every time the door opened.

[Verinda]

Perhaps they would get used to you coming and going? How wonderful to have swallows nesting on your house, you are lucky.

[Darwin.]

I've been out doing a bit of gardening this morning and I see I have great tits now too (stop giggling, I mean the birds). There seem to be more and more birds showing up the whole time.

[Verinda]

I'm giggling! The weather's turned so cold, there was about ten million chaffinches eating the seed I threw out to them this morning...ok not quite ten million but there was a lot.