yellow bird red beak (1 Viewer)

[noneed]

Helloooo All !!!

Please name this bird seen in remote part of Tuscany (Monte Giovi/Collefertile), a pair of which I got an excellent view of early in the morning :-

* yellow bird
* very, very noticeable red beak
* like yellowhammer but red beak
* did I mention it had a red beak?
* very vocal chirping/singing, not shy at all

Cheers!
~noneed:-O

 

[njlarsen]

Sounds like something that escaped from somebody. Waxbills and Whydahs have members with red bills, though I dont have a book that shows one which is yellow elsewhere ...
Niels

 

[noneed]

Thanks very much for reply. Hard to explain why, but I don't think they escaped, because it was a really remote place, and they sort of looked like they belonged - they weren't "acting suspiciously" (if that makes any sense at all), and they could well have been breeding.

I would say they were like buntings, maybe there are variations of yellowhammers in Italy with red beaks ?

 

[abagguley]

Golden Orioles have reddish bills, but the colour isn't really all that bright. Did your birds look like this:

http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=148589

Adrian

 

[nickderry]

is it possible they were a familiar species that had been eating something like berries to stain the beak?

 

[Cristian Mihai]

Golden Orioles have reddish bills, but the colour isn't really all that bright. Did your birds look like this:

http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=148589

Adrian

Hi Adrian,

Golden Orioles are pretty shy and, on the other hand, the tail and the wings are black at orioles!
Maybe nick is right and the beak was postcoloured (this word is my lexical invention, sorry!)

 

[noneed]

Funny enough I got FANTASTIC views of golden oriole family a few days before sighting in question, also in Tuscany (near Il Trebiollo hotel). Oriole chicks had left nest and saw both adults and several chicks which were very noisy and visible - on this occassion not shy.

But oriole is bigger than sighting in question & gold as opposed to yellow - I got really good view of sighting in question & the beak was definitely red and the bird was roughly sparrow sized, therefore smaller than oriole and different beak shape. It was yellowhammer-ish, possibly even yellower, & the red on the beak was not a stain from food - really exotic bird, but not acting like it was out of place.

I have a basic European bird book & I roughly know all the birds in it, so when I saw this sighting I knew it would be something weird.

 

[njlarsen]

Something related to trumpeter finch? Even though I am not sure how you can discount that the bill normally had a different color but looked red due to staining. I have images of a hummingbird that for two weeks showed a yellowish throat where they normally are green, and my interpretation was that the bird had visited a specific flower in a tree and that the pollen caused the yellow color.

Cheers
Niels

 

[noneed]

Fair enough, it must have been a yellowhammer, there's nothing else like it, not in Europe at least, so I accept that maybe the bill was stained red (or it's a mutant or something!). Thanks for help.