02/01/2017 Venus Pools, Shropshire

Pine Bunting: Happy New Year to all my followers and to all the people who are kind enough to click on to my Blog and read through my birding adventures.

Looks like 2017 is getting off to a great start as I bag my first Pine Bunting. Apologies for inconsistent bad images as I had to use my Iphone through my scope, and at some distance.
Smashing little bird and a pretty hard bird to pick up with only a handful of records recorded for Britain. And I can see why, this is a really challenging bird to ID especially when it is in a huge mixed flock of Reed Bunting, Corn Bunting and Yellowhammer, like today.


Hats off to Simon Davies who found the bird and the old boy who pick it up today after a two hour search containing myself and about 80 other birders.

If you wish to see better images of Pine Bunting and read a little bit more about them, then I would highly recommend clicking on to the late, great Martin Garner's excellent blog post.

http://birdingfrontiers.com/2011/12/24/female-pine-bunting/