Figure 316. Note the white rump, orange wing coverts, black-spotted orange flanks, and frosted gray head of this first-winter male Brambling—one of only five recorded in California. It was photographed on 24 December 1990 at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz County (1990-196; James Lomax).

BRAMBLING Fringilla montifringilla Linnaeus, 1758

This finch breeds from northern Scandinavia across central Eurasia to Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk. A pair bred on Attu in the western Aleutian Islands in 1997 (Sykes and Sonneborn 1998). The species winters from the British Isles south to northern Africa and across southern and central Eurasia to China and Japan, casually to the Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Madeira, and the Philippines. A regular migrant through the western Aleutian Islands, this bird occurs rarely but regularly on islands of the Bering Sea and very rarely on the Queen Charlotte Islands of western British Columbia (fide R. Toochin). Vagrants occur casually from mainland Alaska east across northern and central North America to Nova Scotia; the most southerly records include those from Nevada, Colorado, Kansas (NAB 56:191), and North Carolina (North Carolina Bird Records Committee. 2001). Nearly all records from the coterminous 48 states are from fall and winter, although during spring 2006 two apparent migrants were recorded in Oregon between 26 March and 16 April (NAB 60:431) and another was photographed in Idaho, 8–16 April (NAB 60:410, 470). Mlodinow and O’Brien (1996) summarized the species’ New World status and distribution.

California’s first Brambling was a female photographed at a feeder in Crescent City, Del Norte County, 5 February–24 March 1984 (Roberson 1986). The species has now been recorded five times in the state between 20 November and 24 March, including one inland record of a bird that frequented a feeder in Chico, Butte County, 11–19 February 1986.