Tag: chaffinch

Suddenly, Eurasian Chaffinch

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Yep. Exactly what the title says.

I was taking photos of horses in Hout Bay this afternoon when I spotted this little guy in the pine tree above me.

These birds are actually invasives in Cape Town, one of several species introduced by Cecil John Rhodes in his attempts to anglicise South Africa.

Interestingly, while many of his efforts died out very quickly and some are near ubiquitous today, the Chaffinch falls somewhere in the middle, and 130 years after its introduction, is still only found in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs.

Like Hout Bay.

Tit

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There’s a hint of spring in the air. That’s good, because spring is nice and warm and a forerunner of summer (yes, that happens here too). It’s not so great because we still need quite a lot of winter rain to fill up our dams.

Here’s spring-like quota photo of a Eurasian Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) exiting a nesting box last spring in Sheffield:

I’ll admit that I couldn’t remember the scientific name for this little guy, so I had to look it up. On the page was this:

Fullscreen capture 2016-08-26 022854 PM.bmp

Yeah. Bit generic, that second one.

Interestingly, the Common chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) continues to be a problematic invasive species but only in certain parts of the Southern Suburbs:

The chaffinch was introduced from Britain into several of its overseas territories in the 19th century. In South Africa a very small breeding colony in the suburbs of Constantia, Hout Bay and Camps Bay in Cape Town is the only remnant of such an introduction.

I was shocked when I saw one in Bergvliet last year. Seeing a chaffinch was shocking, but worse was the sudden realisation that I was in Bergvliet.