Stay at home

[Jambo235]

At the Ptarmigan restaurant I saw two little birds, finch sized. One had a definite grey head and a bright yellow/orange bill. The other was a bit duller. Having seen snow finches in the Alps I thought that's what these were but I didn't think you got them in the UK? Here is the picture (it's not the best)

[Ian Johnston]

Hi Jambo,

Snow Buntings (Plectropenax nivalis do breed in small numbers on the high Cairngorm tops, but Snow Finches are (as far as i can tell) confined to the high alpine regions of central Europe. Difficult to tell from the photo, but these might be juvenile and/or moulting adult Snow Buntings - di you notice a white wing bar on either of them?

Kind Regards

Ian

[Caberfeidh]

The Cairngorms' snow buntings do tend to congregate around the Ptarmigan to cadge crumbs. I saw one there, perching on the boot of a man who was then getting a crick in his neck trying to look at it through his twitcher's scope!

[Gavin99]

Hi Jambo , I met a bunch of juvenile Snow Buntings hopping around the tor on Cairngorm two weeks ago , maybe even the same ones that you saw :

[Jambo235]

Cheers guys,
The picture of the juvenile does look very similar to one of the birds I saw. The one I've labelled as Male did have a notably grey head with a brown body - maybe it was just going through some weird plumage change as I guess its getting to that time of year.