Photos

Male Chaffinch, Fringilla coelebs. Length 14 - 16 cm. Weight: 18 - 29 gr. Wingspan: 24.5 - 28.5 cm
I've seen this chap hang out on the same "street corner" on several mornings together with a lot of other birds like great tits and sparrows. He's beautiful, but he's also a little soft in the head, if his behaviour is anything to go by ;-).
His favourite morning area is in some trees standing along the end of a row of semi-detached houses near where I live. On the end of the house are no windows, but of course there are windows each side of the house. I don't know what it is about those windows, but this chap is desperate to get inside, so he'll try to fly through the closed window - and he doesn't take no for an answer, he just turns in the air and tries again. In between he takes a breather sitting on a branch, then he takes up his attack on the window once again. The first morning I witnessed this stunt I didn't have the camera with me, which was a great shame, as on that morning he was on the sunny side of the house. Yesterday I saw him pull the same stunt again, but on the shady side. So, even though I took a number of pictures, none of them are worth showing. One obstacle was the shade, the other being a huge bush between him and me. But I'm still hoping to get him at it some day ;-))
This lovely resident bird is easy to recognise; its female partner is less brightly coloured, however, and is often somewhat smaller than the male.
The main sources of food for chaffinches are buds, berries and seeds. Beech mast is one of their favourite sources of food in autumn and winter.
Chaffinches build neat round nests, using moss, lichen, wool, hair and feathers. The most common place to see them nesting isin the fork of a tree or a bush, where they produce typically four to six grey eggs tinged with pink and covered in brown blotches.
Treatment: Crop, contrast +10, saturation +10, USM and resize.