Spinster

The binomial name of the Chaffinch is Fringilla coelebs. 'Fringilla' is the Latin word for finch, and 'coelebs' refers to the Latin word 'caelebs' (coel- and cael- being interchangable, according to my ancient Latin dictionary), which means unmarried. According to Wikipedia the bird was given this name in the mid C18th by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus, who observed that only the females of the species migrated south in winter, leaving the males behind. The common name 'chaffinch' comes from the Old English 'ceaffinc', and refers to the fact that Chaffinches would pick through the chaff left behind after grain was threshed, looking for seed to eat.

Britain having a more temperate climate than Scandinavia, most of our Chaffinches are resident - and indeed sedentary, living close to their hatching sites throughout their lives. The UK does host an influx of winter migrants though, many from Scandinavia, and small flocks of these birds will roam across farmland in their search for food, while the resident natives are more likely to be seen in gardens or woodland, and along hedgerows. As one of the three most common breeding birds in the UK, the Chaffinch is Green-listed as being of least conservation concern. The resident population is put at 6.2 million breeding pairs, but in winter it's said to double or even triple due to inward migration.

It being a dull and dreary day, and R and I both needing a break from dull and dreary domestic tasks, we went up to Hillers mid-afternoon for coffee and cake. I gritted my teeth and spent twenty minutes in the bird hide, trying to close my eyes to the vandalism Ragley Hall have committed against the woodland, while listening to the horrified comments of people coming into the hide and seeing it for the first time. The situation is in no way the fault of Hillers, who are trying to mitigate the calamity by maintaining their usual feeding programme, and have even put up new seed feeders to support the small songbirds - though there's nothing they can do for species such as the Treecreeper and Goldcrest, which relied on the devastated pine trees. In my twenty minutes I saw only five species, which wasn't great, but I was pleased with this shot of a female Chaffinch - much less showy than the pink and blue males, but looking rather subtly elegant, I think.