The First Ladybird Book of British Birds – #6 The Bullfinch

I’m leafing through my copy of The First Ladybird Book of British Birds and their Nests this month. Turning the page today it’s the Bullfinch:

“The Bullfinch is one of our most beautiful birds but is not very common, and being most shy, is seldom seen.”

It’s certainly true that Bullfinches are more difficult to see than many other birds that visit gardens. All the ones that were easy to see were probably killed or captured and only the extremely wary survived to raise other extremely wary birds in their families.

Here’s one I managed to photograph after a few attempts to get close:

They still are one of our most beautiful birds. Here’s the male:

I saw one over forty years ago and drew it and noted it in my nature notebooks:

Bullfinch – forty years ago in my nature notebooks

Here are my notes:

A local country park in Devon has routered portraits of birds and one of them is the Bullfinch:

I now have a digital portrait to go with it: