Anyone any idea

[cmcmck]

Who this little chap is? He's been visiting our front area for some days. Smaller than a sparrow or dunnock but bigger than a wren with an insectivore's beak and beautiful regular markings. Obviously European and a British known species as that's where we are.







Update

Thanks to the_godiva  for a lead. The little visitor is a female little bunting according to our bird recognition books.

Our gravel covered front area obviously contains lots of things to her liking. :o)

 

Comments

[senmut]

Sadly, all I can see is Wren, as it looks so much like the ones we had as 'boarders' in the unused mail box this year. But I'm American.

[cmcmck]

Not a wren as I'n very familar with them and this little one isn't one.

[iddewes]

I put the photo through an app I have for identifying wildlife and that said it was a dunnock? I’m in Germany so we generally have a lot of the same birds.

[cmcmck]

Not a dunnock as we have them as regular visitors and this guy is too small and has the wrong sort of beak.

[iddewes]

I asked my friend who knows a lot about birds too and she also thought dunnock but she said it looked very puffed up. Hope someone else knows.
Oh she also came up with pipit but it should have gone south for the winter then.

[cmcmck]

We did wonder about pipits but as you say,they should have left us by now.

[full_metal_ox]

Two words: climate change.

[cmcmck]

You may well be right as our starlings usually migrate (locally to the south) but the big bachelor juvenile groups are still about eating us out of house and home as are our blackbirds.

[yourlibrarian]

It looks rather like our house sparrows but I don't imagine that's it given where you live.

[cmcmck]

We have both house and tree sparrows as regular visitors and he's not like either of them.

[prettyarbitrary]

It looks like a female house finch to me. The size sounds about right.

[cmcmck]

But finches are seed eaters and this guy has an insectivore's beak.

[kiki_eng]

I also threw it at a wildlife identification app to see what the algorithm would tell me - iNaturalist thinks that it's an Accentor (Genus Prunella - includes Dunnocks) but the photo algorithm doesn't always get things right. I find that if you submit an observation to iNaturalist birders are pretty quick to identify a thing if the pictures are at all reasonable, so that would be my rec.

[cmcmck]

Thanks for the idea.

We have dunnocks visiting regularly and this little guy doesn't have their wonderful eyebrows!

[violsva]

Is it a juvenile sparrow or something? I wouldn't expect it at this time of year, but I am not an ornithologist.

[cmcmck]

It's not a juvenile if the plumage in anything to go by and also way too colourful (in that brown sort of way) for either of our local sparrow species. Again wrong beak type too.

[wendles]

If it weren't December I'd say it was a young dunnock, since they don't get the excellent grey eyebrows till they mature; but it seems awfully late in the year for a juvenile still to be around.

[cmcmck]

I'd say so and our dunnocks did leave us some time back.

[ravena_kade]

you seem to have a mystery.

[cmcmck]

We really do!

Maybe we'll end up with a front area full of twitchers! :o)

[adore]

SO CUTE!

[cmcmck]

And I'm glad I found out who she is! :o)

[scytale]

What a beauty! I hope she keeps visiting.

[cmcmck]

She's been back a time of two since :o)