Bramblings are probably among the commonest birds that most Britons have never knowingly seen. Fringilla montifringilla is the chaffinch equivalent that’s found across the boreal forests of northern Eurasia, but here they appear only in winter, visiting almost anywhere with trees, frequently in towns and even big cities, and routinely at birdfeeders.
Beechmast is a key part of their diet and at Lightwood there are currently about 500 bramblings scattered across the high canopy. The flock is hypervigilant and edgy, so that no single bird is in view for any length of time. Small groups repeatedly take short downward flights on a trajectory that makes them seem as if they’re skiing between the branches. Then up they surge back to the tops. Occasionally one tree inexplicably gathers them in and they’ll sit there en masse, glowing but restlessly rearranging position, like strangely animate tree decorations.
The male’s front and shoulders are sunset orange, and his head is blackish. All bramblings have undersides of linen white that can gleam silver in sharp light. Their backs are brindled pinky brown, with two black-and-white slashes over the wings. The other compelling detail is a pure-white rump, and as a flock departs it will present as a galaxy of snowy spheres that all flash as they vanish into the dark chaos of the treescape. A final key element in the pleasure of brambling flocks are their calls, especially a minute, repeated djup in flight, then a longer zweejj that sounds like wet sponge on rubber.
The brambling’s beak is yellowish pink and pointed like tweezer tips, which it uses to extract beech seeds from their spiny cases. Here the birds are feeding in a way I’ve never observed before, peeling off strips of moss and lichen from the branches of the sycamores. Presumably they are in search of arthropods, but in aggregate the technique sends down a drizzle of plant fragments. But moss stripping is a business that holds them barely a minute, and off they swirl as one, amid fresh squalls of buzzy notes, the sudden sleet of their white rumps and a faint susurration composed by a thousand small wings.
