Lesser is more

 Just a quick trip out to go and keep my year list moving. There is a small reserve on the edge of St. Albans called the Watercress beds. I suppose it used to be in the countryside but now it has been overtaken by development and along with some nearby allotments is a bit of an oasis. It only covers a very few acres and is managed, like Maple Lodge, purely by volunteers. In layout there are a few small areas, like an old orchard, but mainly it is the old watercress bed which is now a pool with coots and ducks and a shallower marshy area. The small area of woodland is a magnet for small birds. It was this which primarily brought me here as there have been good numbers of lesser redpolls associating with the siskins in the alders and coming down to the bird feeders on site. There are also bullfinches, which are very rare in semi-urban settings now. 

I parked up in a trading estate nearby and a short walk got me to the reserve. The single hide on site is for members only and a couple of blokes were in there with coffee to keep them warm. It doesn't get you any real privileges apart from a sheltered seat as most of the site is open to walk round. I quickly found the bird feeder where another birder was already present.

 It looked more like a garden than a reserve but the birds were loving it. There was a constant stream of them - blue and great tits, chaffinches, robins - coming onto the feeder. Pretty quickly they were also joined by a small flock of redpolls and siskins.

Both are quite small finches. The redpolls are mainly streaky brown with a white-belly and that red "poll" over the top of their beak.

For such a small bird they are quite controversial and complex. At the moment there are 3 different species you can tick in the UK (plus a few sub-species). The commonest here are the lesser redpolls, which these are. At the other end of the scale are the arctic redpolls. The image below is one from a few years ago in Suffolk.

They are like balls of snow, really white and also quite a bit larger. In between are the common or mealy redpolls (shot below from the same place as the arctic redpoll). Their plumage is a lot lighter than lesser redpolls. There are other subtler differences to do with rump colour which I won't go into here.

The rumour on the birders grapevine is that in the next few months these three species will be "lumped" together. Unfortunately this will mean everyone has two fewer ticks so it's generally not very liked. It is based on DNA-sequencing, a new and sometimes controversial technique of looking at similarities and differences of DNA rather than morphology. It is hard to complain too much though as this has also resulted in some splits whereby we have gained new species. The arctic redpolls in particular are a spectacular bird and I'm sure will remain popular even if they do only become a sub-species.

Anyway, I spent about an hour on the reserve and although the siskins were frequent visitors

and a greenfinch was wheezing away in the trees the bullfinches remained hidden. Leaves me with a good reason to come back especially if I can get a day when there is a bit of sunshine!