Eurasian Bullfinch

• Pairs form in winter and stay together for life, with the families remaining together until the next breeding cycle.
• Its fondness for the tender shoots and buds of fruit trees has earned it a reputation as a pest in orchards.
• It rides out snowstorms better than other passerines precisely because of that: when everything is covered, it carries on eating buds from the bushes.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bird)

Habitat & environment

Deciduous beech and oak woodland with dense undergrowth, mixed and riverside woodland, always in humid settings. It breeds above 1,000 m, reaching 2,400 m in the Pyrenean fir woods; in winter it comes down to orchards, parks and scrub

Birth weight

Altricial: born blind, naked or with sparse down and entirely dependent

Size at birth

Altricial: born blind, naked or with sparse down and entirely dependent

Sexual maturity

1 year

Gestation / incubation

12-14 days, by the female, whom the male feeds throughout

Litter / clutch size

4-6 white or pale blue eggs with dark speckles at the broad end, with two and even three clutches a year between April and the end of summer

Sources consulted: SEO/BirdLife (ficha y III Atlas de las aves en época de reproducción en España); IUCN Red List; Asturnatura; Belamendia 2022, III Atlas; Noval 1971, Ardeola (volumen especial); Carrascal y Palomino 2008; Clement y Christie 2013, Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive; De Juana y García 2015

Best time: All year round on the Cantabrian coast; in winter it moves down to lower ground and spreads over almost the whole peninsula