When staff from the Copeland Bird Observatory caught a young common rosefinch on Saturday, it was only the third ever confirmed sighting in Northern Ireland — and the other two were also in the Copelands.
Common rosefinches hail from Mongolia and the Far East but have gradually spread westwards in recent years to eastern European countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic. However, they remain extremely rare in Ireland.
Duty officer David Galbraith said common rosefinches have previously been sighted on the islands in 1977 and 1985, but have not been recorded anywhere else in Northern Ireland.
“It was a normal day’s monitoring of migrating birds at the observatory. We had swallows and housemartins moving through in reasonable numbers, and some goldcrests,” he said.
Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/environment/rare-asian-rosefinch-has-twitchers-in-flap-16210112.html#ixzz26LoZB355
Bird details: http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=8841
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