While I love this blog, I now pretty much only write on my other two blogs: BirdingBlogs.com and 10,000 Birds - I would love to see you there!

Sunday 13 December 2009

Snowfinches are back

Every winter, hundreds of Snowfinches collect in Kühtai in large non-breeding flocks; feeding on the sunflower seeds on offer there, and sheltering from bad weather in the high mountains. I have yet to see a snowfinch below 1800m and Kühtai lies at just over 2000m.

The flock size tends to increase through the winter, reaching a peak in about February (but I'll monitor it more closely over the next winter season.
Yesterday I was up in Kühtai again for a day of glorious powder skiing and picked up the first small flocks of the season in town (as opposed to the single individuals I have been seeing in the high mountains up until now).
It is wonderful to have them back, and I look forward to take looooots of photos of them over the next few months.

If you are interested in other blog posts about snowfinches in Tirol/Austria, see here.

Happy birding,
Dale Forbes

6 comments:

Chris said...

Hi Dale,
I hope you will get looooots of pictures of them, then we would be able to admire them ;-)

Dale Forbes said...

I'll trade you: you send me an Eider and I'll send you a flock of snowfinches!

nuna87 said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Dale Forbes said...

dude, I don't want your Bangalori flowers! I am sure they are pretty, I just don't want them.

Fraser Simpson said...

Love Snowfinches - they were a bit of a 'bogey' bird of mine for a while.

Dale Forbes said...

Fraser, you come to Tirol and I will work my hardest to find them for you! Easy in Winter, hard work in spring and summer. Autumn either super hard or fairly easy - more a luck thing.