Snowfinch photo from last weekend

Snowfinch, originally uploaded by mcapper.

I was just looking through Mathew Capper's photostream and found this snowfinch photo from last weekend.

He really captured the bird. There is a peace in the belly of the focal bird, and active eye-movement between the two snowfinches, making for an interesting composition.

As Mathew so rightly pointed out, the snowfinch in the foreground has the dark bill, typical of breeding-plumage snowfinches, while the snowfinch at the back still has a fair amount of yellow in its bill. Just a few weeks ago there were hundreds of snowfinches about in Kühtai (Tirol), and a good proportion of them still had their yellow winter bills. This last weekend, we only saw about 30 snowfinches, almost all of which had black bills.

It is fascinating how these birds manage to get going with spring festivities when it is still snowing all the way down in to the deepest valleys - incredible.