L B J

I have decided that I really ought to get to grips with the LBJs lurking in the farmland and countryside around where I live.
I made a start earlier this year when I identified some tree sparrows. I have since found them in two other locations so they are obviously much more common than I thought.

Today's bird landed in a tree near me and was just a silhouette against the bright but plain cloudy sky. Tricky. I over-rode the camera's exposure reading by plus one and two thirds stops. Its distance from me meant risking using the digital zoom at 2X on top of full optical zoom.
Only then did I realise that I was looking at a fine example of a male linnet.

The Common Linnet (Carduelis cannabina)


(LBJ = Little Brown Job, a somewhat derogatory term used by birders for any generally brown small bird.)