Rare Beara hawfinch has me atwitter

I HAVE had a couple of interesting emails from readers over the past few days.

One came from the Beara Peninsula from a reader who’d recently spotted a hawfinch in her garden. She’d never seen one before and wanted to know if they were rare.

Well they are — so rare that I’ve never seen one in my life, though I can’t find the species in the lists of the Irish Rare Birds Committee. And they’re particularly rare at this time of year, most sightings are in the autumn or winter. This makes the sighting particularly interesting because hawfinches have occasionally bred in Ireland in the past and the presence of one in summer means that there is a possibility of a breeding pair.