Essential ID for beginners
A guide to our new series of ID cards
This month we are launching a new series of cut-out-and keep at-a-glance ID cards, which you will find on the inside of the front cover of the magazine. We are starting with guides to raptors in flight, waders by bill, finches by outline and dawn chorus birds by songs. Over the next four pages, we will look at a few tips to get you started on the road to confident identification of these four groups of bird: finches ( by shape), raptors in flight, waders ( by bill), and songsters.
We have a dozen or so regular finch species in the UK. They vary from the tiny Siskin to the huge Hawfinch. Like waders, finches show their feeding habitats well through their bill sizes and shapes.
Size
Finches come in four main size categories: tiny, like Siskin and the redpolls; small like Goldfinch, Linnet, Twite and Greenfinch; medium-large like Chaffinch and Bullfinch; and large, such as the crossbills and Hawfinch. Sort this out as a first step to identification.
Overall shape
The next stage is to work out what sort of shape your subject finch has: concentrate on overall proportions and shape, including how large the head is relative to the rest of the bird; is the bird plump and rounded or skinny and elongated; then look at tail and wing length.
Bill shape
Finches are essentially seed-eaters.
But seeds in this case vary from tiny thistle seeds to cherry stones. And so, all sorts of sizes and shapes are employed, from tiny pincers (Siskin) up to huge nutcrackers (Hawfinch) and even crossed ‘pliers’ (Crossbill)