Brambling
Forty years ago I saw a Brambling for the first time and noted it down in my childhood nature notebooks:
![Brambling - 1970s Nature Notebooks - The Hall of Einar - (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Brambling-1970s-Nature-Notebooks-The-Hall-of-Einar_0004-001.jpg)
Fringilla montifringilla. What a great name. I haven’t seen one again since 1977. I’ve been busy being a teenager and then a dad. I’m not complaining.
I’m delighted that after all this time there are Bramblings foraging on the ground under the feeders at Lago di Alviano in Italy.
![Brambling - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Alviano2-The-Hall-of-Einar-5885.jpg)
I’m shocked at what they look like. That yellow beak! Those orange legs! That orange and black plumage. What a fabulous bird.
We are also treated to a male with his black head:
![Brambling - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Alviano2-The-Hall-of-Einar-5894.jpg)
‘Like female Chaffinch’, I wrote forty years ago. I definitely wouldn’t write that again. There’s a female Chaffinch feeding with them. They share body shape and size but that’s about it:
![Chaffinch - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)](https://www.thehallofeinar.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Alviano2-The-Hall-of-Einar-5901.jpg)
I can’t wait to see them again.