Cambridgeshire's first 'Greenland' Redpoll?

A putative 'Greenland' Redpoll (left) with Lesser (middle) and 'Mealy' (right) Redpolls for comparison, Gamlingay, 12th March 2011 © Jim Lawrence.

Note Greenland (rostrata) and Mealy (flammea) Redpolls are lumped as forms of Common Redpoll -following current BOU Taxonomy - along with a further 'Icelandic' race islandica. Icelandic Redpoll closely resembles the Greenland race rostrata though it is usually much paler. Together, Greenland and Icelandic Redpolls are also often known as 'North Western' Redpoll.

Mark Thomas first trapped this putative 'Greenland' Redpoll on March 5th when he was struck by its 'enormity' in the hand, dark tones and heavily streaked underparts. He re-trapped this same bird on Saturday morning when I took these pictures.

In addition to the distinct morphological characters of this bird and the supporting biometrics Mark recorded, we also heard it give a very different call to the more highly pitched tones of other birds present, on release. J.L.

Here the 'Greenland' Redpoll with a 'Lesser' Redpoll (right) for comparison.

You can read more about this bird here.