Common Redpoll

Can be confused withSource

• Eurasian Siskin — Siskin is yellow-green with broad yellow wing bars and yellow in the tail, the male with a black crown. Redpoll is brown and streaked with no yellow, and a red forehead instead.
• Twite — Twite has no red on the head and a yellow bill in winter; Redpoll has a red forehead year-round and a small black chin patch.

VoiceSource

Often known by its voice: a dry "djæp-djæp-djæp" as it flies high overhead. The song is a rapid twitter and a long, whirring trill.

BehaviourSource

Much like Siskin in habits, and outside the breeding season often forms large flocks with it, roaming for the seeds of conifers, birch and alder; the birds clamber nimbly about the outermost twigs. Breeds in conifer plantations, above all the dune plantations of west Jutland, but also in summer-house areas, overgrown bogs and here and there in gardens.

When and whereSource

A Danish breeder since the 1950s, when it colonised as part of a general spread across central Europe; it moved quickly into the plantations of west and central Jutland and is now found in most places, the islands included. The population was put at 1,800 pairs in 2024 against 4,000 in 2018 — more than halved in six years, and far from the 10,000-20,000 pairs of the 1970s. The 2019 Red List has it as Least Concern with fewer than 10,000 mature individuals, but that assessment sits under the name Acanthis cabaret from when the forms were treated as separate species, and it notes itself that the figures are uncertain because breeders are hard to tell from visitors from the north. Numbers of passage and winter visitors vary greatly from year to year with the seed crop further north.

RelativesSource