Finding 2 new bird species in a British Woodland!

Hi everyone, it's Liam here from A Shot of Wildlife. Today I've come to Linford Arboretum in search of a special finch. Now sometimes when you're searching for birds you have to stay hidden, a bit of camouflage and you know you don't want to get noticed. Today isn't one of those days. Today I'm with my friend Amy and Nat and the pride umbrella and just out there is a whole menagerie of birds. So far I've already seen a brambling, a couple of other species and hopefully soon the hawfinch is going to turn up. I don't think that was filming. We'll laugh as they may, turns out I was filming and this is the best intro I have. The lane was closed off to the public, the bird seed spread over the ground and word had definitely got out about the plentiful food supply. Just here there are four species and there are several more out of view. Let's take a closer look at some of them. These small brown birds with grey heads and chests are dunnocks. They used to be known as hedge sparrows although they're not actually closely related to real sparrows at all. They're the UK's only member of the bird family the acentors. As the old nickname implies they spend a lot of their time amongst hedges and because of this people sometimes only catch brief glimpses of them, meaning that their identity is often questioned. And here are a couple of other species. The bird closest in with the white cheeks and head stripe is a coltip and the two birds to the centre of the screen are chaffinches. The more colourful of the two with the orange markings is a male whilst the more green coloured bird is a female. Chaffinches are a fairly common bird of woodlands, parks and gardens but not as common as they used to be. They've recently declined by more than 30% and scientists aren't really sure why. One potential cause is a disease called trichomoniasis which particularly affects them but they are also susceptible to other diseases like papillomavirus which has caused this bird's feet to look scaly and swollen. Amongst the chaffinches and dunnocks there are a couple other species, one of which I've never seen before, the brambling. These birds with their striking markings and orange breasts and sides are a winter visitor to the UK, spending their summers in Scandinavia and western Siberia. Each year, depending on how cold it is and the food availability further north, between 45,000 and 1.8 million of them arrive on our shores. Whilst they are here they can form large mixed species flocks with chaffinches and roam from place to place in search of seeds, berries and nuts to feed upon. Aside from a plump wood pigeon and a friendly robin, there's one last species I want to show you from the lane, the beautiful yellow hammer. These birds are members of the bunting family and although both sexes are colourful, it is the male that has the most prominent and vibrant yellow markings. They're resident all year round but just like the chaffinches they have undergone a drastic population decline in recent years and it's thought that theirs may be down to changing farming practices. Well I've been there for about 20 minutes now and so far no sign of hawfinches but Linford Arboretum is quite big so we're going to take a walk around and maybe we'll see them elsewhere and if not we're going to come past here on the way back so hopefully they'll be there then but in the meantime there's a chicken not that, the chicken's over there, yeah wish us luck. I wish I could create some suspense here but I like to be honest about how things have gone. Just a short walk from the lane we saw a man looking across a field with a scope and I bet you can guess what he was looking at, hawfinches. These are the largest finch in the UK and it's another lifetime first for me. They can be quite secretive and although I've tried to find them before I've always came up empty-handed. Between one and two thousand of these birds breed in the country and between ten and fifteen thousand over winter here. Hawfinches have a very top-heavy appearance mainly due to their big powerful beaks. They use these to split the stones of fruits and seeds from several species of trees. These are searching through the grass for fallen seeds from a beech tree and due to their specific diet they rely heavily on mature woodlands for food. Despite being the largest finch we get here they're still not very big, they're actually slightly smaller than a song thrush. So just coming down this track a little bit further away from where we saw the bramblings and there was a man stood looking over the field. Now I was looking in the trees but I wouldn't have even checked on the ground so I asked him what he was looking at and sure enough it was hawfinches. Got some pretty good views although they were quite far away so now we're scrolching our way around and hopefully going to see them from the other side. The hawfinches have moved away by the time we scrolched to the other side of the field so we cut through a small woodland hoping for some other birds. We had no luck with the birds in the trees but did come across this pair of mute swans on a woodland pool. They have a fierce reputation but I've only ever been hit by one once and that was part of a mutually humiliating but successful rescue which I'll have to tell you about another day. It was getting dark so it was time to head home and as you can see I'm back in the car. It's got dark outside now, it's getting pretty rainy as well so it's time to call it a day. If you did enjoy this video check out this other British Wildlife video which will be on one of these sides and subscribe if you like that as well. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.