Brambling
Fringilla montifringilla
Habitat
Ground
Diet
Omnivore
Active Time
Diurnal
Size
23 g
About This Species
Look for orange-breasted finches forming large mixed flocks with chaffinches on farmland and beech woodland across Europe and northern Asia in winter, often feeding on fallen beech mast on the ground. Breeding birds favour boreal birch and conifer forest in Scandinavia and Russia, well north of most wintering areas. Cold winter days following a good beech mast crop can produce spectacular flocks numbering in the thousands at favoured feeding sites.
Ethical Viewing Guidelines
- A distance of 10 to 15 metres from a feeding flock is generally enough to avoid flushing birds while still allowing good views with binoculars.
- Wildlife protection for wild birds is in place across the EU under the Birds Directive and in the UK under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, though specific provisions differ from further east in its Asian range.
- Avoid disturbing large winter roosts, since repeated flushing wastes energy reserves birds need to survive cold nights.
LCAvesPasseriformesFringillidae
Seasonal Activity
1,496,685 sightings · 2000–2026
Citizen science records via GBIF
All monthsThis month
Classification
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Phylum
- Chordata
- Class
- Aves
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Fringillidae
Traits
- Diet
- Omnivore
- Foraging
- Ground
- Activity
- Diurnal
- Body mass
- 23 g
Photo
Wikimedia Commons / Wikimedia Commons
CC-BY-SA-4.0
Occurrence data from GBIF.