The Eurasian Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) is one of Sweden's most sought-after winter birds, the male's glowing crimson-red breast, black cap and blue-grey back making it impossible to mistake for anything else. The female shares exactly the same pattern, black cap, white wing bar, and a pure white rump that flashes clearly in flight, but her breast is wine-red to rosy-beige rather than fiery red, and her back is more yellowish-brown. Juveniles lack the black cap entirely, showing a plain brown head instead. Measuring 14-17 cm with a short, stout, all-black bill built for cracking seeds, it is a heavily built, rounded finch.
Its call is a soft, descending, faintly melancholic "dü" or "phyü", used to keep pairs in contact and easily learned once heard; the song itself, a low, gurgling warble, is rarely heard outside the breeding season. Bullfinches breed across Sweden from Skåne to Lapland, most densely in the centre and north, nesting in dense spruce or mixed forest and forest edges with berry bushes; the nest, a twig platform lined with lichen, is built 1-3 m up and holds 4-5 blue-green, violet-spotted eggs incubated for 12-14 days. Unusually among small Swedish birds, pairs stay together year-round. In spring the diet turns to fruit-tree buds, which can occasionally damage orchards, while autumn and winter birds rely on rowan berries, rose hips, hawthorn and apples, extracting the kernel and discarding the husk so that red flakes fall beneath the trees. Winter also brings an influx of larger, paler northern birds moving south, which can form flocks of 20-50 in berry-rich gardens. With 150,000-400,000 pairs, the population is considered secure.
Read about this species in Swedish →