Bullfinch - Pyrrhula pyrrhula

The Bullfinch is resident and quite widespread. Mostly seen in trees and hedges in family groups they are quite timid birds and don’t often come to ground. Even though they are quite shy the males are easy to spot as they are brightly coloured.

Habitat

Bullfinches can be found in a number of habitats including woodlands, parks, gardens, hedgerows and farmland where there is scrub and untrimmed hedgerows.

Description

Both the males and females have a stubby bill, a distinctive black face and cap, white barring on the wings, white rump and bluish grey upperparts, but that is where the similarity between the sexes end. Males are much more brightly coloured with striking bright red underparts where the females are duller with pinkish brown underparts. Young birds look similar in appearance to the females, but lack the black cap which they get after their first moult.

Biology

Their diet is quite broad consisting mainly of the seeds and berries of a variety of plants. They can be quite destructive towards fruit trees and flowering shrubs where they eat the buds in spring when there is a lacks of seeds and berries; because of this they were often seen as pests of fruit crops in particular in orchards.

Thick hedgerows and dense woodlands are favoured places for nest building. Nests are built a few feet from the ground and consist of twigs and mosses and lined with fine roots. Up to five, pale blue and spotted eggs are laid in May which the female then incubates for two weeks. Both males and females feed their chicks, they fledge after a couple of weeks and the parents will often produce another brood, some years they can have up to three broods.

Threats

There was a dramatic decline in Bullfinch numbers between the late 1960’s and the early 1990’s especially on farmland where there was over a 70% fall in numbers (there was over a 40% fall in woodland areas). This is mainly due to the changes in farming practices, in particular the trend of removing hedgerows around fields, which destroyed nesting and feeding habitats of the Bullfinch.

Until 1996 it was legal to trap and kill Bullfinches as pests despite being protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The new laws in 1996 now mean that trapping is only permitted under licence once serious damage has been proven and there are no other alternatives.

There are thought to be less than 200,000 pairs of Bullfinches in Britain

Conservation

The Bullfinch is protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) and is a UK and Wiltshire BAP (Biodiversity Action Plan) species.