Rosy

How gorgeous is this?

Not the photo - trust me, I'm more than aware of its deficiencies - but the beautiful flush on the breast of this male Redpoll, who's coming into his breeding finery in advance of the rest of the Hillers flock. One again I had to turn to the Facebook birders for confirmation of my own tentative identification: he doesn't look "frosty" enough to be Common, so I'm going to say that he's Lesser. (If by now you're bored to the back teeth with the variations and vagaries of Redpolls, I can't say I blame you. But some if not all of these little finches will be off about their summer concerns soon, and then we'll never need to speak of them again. Or not until next winter, at any rate.)

Three trips to Hillers in three days is starting to feel like too much chocolate tiffin time spent in their bird hide, but the weather today was truly vile - slightly warmer than yesterday, but blowy and wet - and in any case I had too many other things to do to venture further afield, so Dunnington it had to be. Given the light, the birding was better than the photography, but an hour's bird therapy is always worthwhile. This evening I went to choir practice and got ninety minutes of Brahms therapy as well, so I'm finishing what could have been a depressing day in a thoroughly beatific mood.