Brambling
Fringilla montifringilla
Kvækerfinken (Fringilla montifringilla) er en finke i ordenen af spurvefugle. Den yngler i skovområder i et bælte fra Norge i vest, gennem tajgaen i den nordlige del af Eurasien til Kamchatka ved Stillehavet i øst.
A northern counterpart to the Chaffinch, which it resembles in build and habits. Told by the orange breast and above all by the white , which flashes as a flock lifts off the woodland floor. The male has a black head in breeding dress and a greyer one in winter, with a rusty-yellow throat and breast and a whitish underside spotted dark along the flanks.
Can be confused with
- Common Chaffinch — Chaffinch has a green rump where Brambling's is clean white — that is the sure difference, and it shows best as the bird flies up. Brambling's breast is also orange rather than pink.
Plumage and variation
Male and female: The female resembles the male in winter dress, but the sides of the head are pale yellow-grey, the breast paler and the white wing panels less prominent.
Summer and winter: In winter the male's black head and back are partly veiled by pale feather fringes, giving the bird an almost scaled look.
Voice
The call is a coarse, metallic "kvæ-æk" or "tjæ-æv". In flight it gives a distinctive drawn-out, hoarse "kvææææ" — the sound the Danish name comes from.
Behaviour
Here it occurs above all in beech woods, living on beech mast, but also visits parks and gardens and is a frequent guest at the feeder. The white rump works as a signal to others of its kind and helps hold the flock together — and the flocks can be enormous.
When and where
Not a Danish breeder: the 2019 Red List records that the species has never been an established breeder here, and it has been found nesting only about ten times. It is, however, a numerous passage and winter visitor as northern populations pass through towards western Europe and the Mediterranean, and many stay the winter. Numbers swing wildly with the beech-mast years — in a heavy mast year the flocks can reach quite extraordinary size. No national count exists, so this description is deliberately kept qualitative.
Facts
Wingspan
27 cm
Conservation status
ikke truet
Relatives
Family
finches
Fringillidae
Order
passerines
Passeriformes
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