Red and gold

Finally (hopefully) back to my posting habits; can't say it was an insane lack of time, but a whole bunch of reasons kept me away from being that active here. So might as well be back with a post for one of my favourite subjects: wildlife! Another SMAP is here, and again the theme is free!

It's a gold(en) opportunity to show off these little fellas:

^{European goldfinch - Carduelis carduelis}

See what I did there? 😝

Goldfinches are very common passerines, and they're as beautiful as unmistakable: red, white and black bars on the face, and black wings with a yellow bar, that's clearly visible when they fly.

The markings on the wings are notorious even when they're perching, and facing the opposite way. And another good way to identify them, even if you're not seeing them properly?

By their songs, exactly what this one was doing! Given these were taken in Spring, I'm guessing this was a male; sexes have almost imperceptible differences in thei face colours, so it's almost impossible to tell them apart.

I saw a lot of goldfinches this time, and they were all perching in very easy to spot locations.

I did had a tree trunk hiding my aproach here, but...

Busted, as usual! :) It's hard to sneak up to these guys!

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I did talk about red too in my title. And no, it wasn't because of the red in the goldfinches faces. Another species caught my eye, and funny thing, they visited @nelinoeva as well!

^{Common linnet - Linaria cannabina}

Twigs, always the damn twigs! But in this case, they actualy provide a really nice contrast to the photography! Among the twigs, there was the linnet tending to its plummage in this cold morning.

Linnets are usually more barred in their plummage, but those double reddish patches in the chest are characteristic, so I don't think I'm misidentifying these critters; maybe the lighting fades the other colours a little bit? Anyway, it's always great to find them, because unlike the goldfinches, these ones I don't see that often.

He was definitely keen on tidying up his feathers, so he payed zero attention to me; which is a good thing, because it kept him perched long enough for me to register the moment!

There you go, red and gold to swrap the weekend; I'm glad I'm not missing SMAP this time!

Have a great week!

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