Your Birding Month

Birds to find this month include Twite, Snow Bunting and Smew!

This month we celebrate the reprieve of the Lesser Redpoll. Early last year the recognised ‘authority’ on what birders ‘can tick’, the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU), announced that from the start of 2018 it would be adopting the taxonomy of birds followed by the International Ornithological Congress (IOC). In essence, this would be an exercise in splitting and lumping, leading to minor tweaks in the British List here and there. This would bring ‘armchair ticks’, as birds such as the Bean Goose were ‘split’ into more than one species (Taiga Bean Goose and Tundra Bean Goose). But, this would be countered by the ‘lumping’ of others, such as the Whimbrel and the (rare in the UK) Hudsonian Whimbrel. One species group which, potentially, was due for lumping was the redpoll complex. Our ‘British’ (and near continental) species, the Lesser Redpoll, was due to be re-lumped with the larger, whiter, northern Common Redpoll (including the so-called Mealy Redpoll). So, all British birders who have Common Redpoll and Lesser Redpoll on their lists were due a cut in their list total by one. Except, no, in July 2017 the IOC approved the splitting of Lesser Redpoll from the Common Redpoll complex. So, let us celebrate this smallest, brownest, buffest and least ostentatious of redpolls and the continuation of its presence on our lists. They really are cute little finches and can, in the case of bright males, be quite strikingly coloured with rosy pink breast to match the red forehead (which gives the redpolls their name). Look for these most tit-like of finches, often in flocks of scores or even hundreds of birds, feeding in birches or Alders near you. And tick them with pride for your year list.