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Body length: 15 cm
Body mass: 22-23 g
Appearance:
Male: blue-grey shoulders and forehead, but red-brown breast and cheeks, green rump, and dark wings with pale bars.
Female: brown shoulders and forehead, beige breast, green rump, and dark wings with the pale bars.
Poland’s most abundant breeding bird, nesting in all types of woodland and forest, but also in copses, orchards, parks and gardens. Well able to conceal its elaborate nest, for example with lichens that the female (only) supplies. Has two broods a year. Mainly eats insects, spending 80% of its day on the ground seeking food. Diet supplemented by seeds of wild plants, nectar, and even leaking tree-sap. Males exceptionally aggressive towards one another. A migrant in Poland, though more and more now winter here.
Descriptions drawing on content of Ptaki Polski (“Birds of Poland”) - a book authored by Andrzej G. Kruszewicz, and published by MULTICO Oficyna Wydawnicza Sp. z o.o.
