Sacha wrote:
Can someone help me ID the bird I just caught a glimpse of in the
garden, please? It was about the size and approximate colour of
a sparrow - and to be honest, it /could/ have been a (f)sparrow, as
I couldn't get a clear sight on it ... but it looked like it had
a shorter fatter beak, and a slight yellow tinge to its back ..
and it .. they, there were 2 of them, appeared to be picking off
aphids from the underside of the rose and victoria plum tree, which
I have never seen a sparrow do. It also had a more swoopy flight
than sparrows tend to.
I was thinking maybe some kind of finch?

A Goldfinch?

No, not even slightly. It was a tint of yellow, not bright yellow,
and not a red face, and no white markings. So no.
Could have been
http://images.pictureshunt.com/pics/f/finch-8111.jpg
which appears to just be marked as 'finch', but a bit of a search
seems to imply that that is a purple finch, which doesn't come over
here! So that's a bit unlikely. Plus it doesn't have the yellowness
that I thought this one did.

Maybe it was just a sparrow. :-)