Eurasian Chaffinch

How to recognise it

• The size of a House Sparrow but slimmer and with a longer tail
• Double white wing bars and white outer tail feathers, clearly visible in flight
• Male has a blue-grey head, black forehead and reddish-brown cheeks, neck and breast
• Female is duller grey-brown on neck and breast, and young birds resemble her

Call and song

From March the Eurasian Chaffinch sings loudly and piercingly, with a final flourish that sounds roughly like tsitsitsitsjatsjatsoritiu-tsip. The song has regional dialects. The call is a loud fink, fink and the flight call a soft jupp. In some areas it also gives a call known as the rain song, hyitt or rrhy.

Where and when

The Eurasian Chaffinch is a partial migrant that breeds in Sweden. It reaches north to the spruce forest zone or the lower pine forest zone in Lapland. The number of pairs in Sweden was estimated in 2018 at about 8.3 million. It is reported all year round and from all 21 counties.

Food and behaviour

It eats berries, insects and all kinds of seeds, and its young are fed insects and larvae. Outside the breeding season it eats mainly seeds and plant material on the ground, nodding its head rhythmically. It then forms loose flocks, sometimes with Bramblings. In winter mainly females with young of the year leave the breeding area, while older males more often stay in their territory.