Red-fronted Serin

The red-fronted serin is a small serin, 11–13 centimetres long and 9–14 grams, with a short bill and a tail forked at the tip. In the male the head is black including nape, throat and neck, except for the blood-red forehead that gives it its name. The rest of the plumage is strongly and densely streaked black lengthwise. The rump is orange-yellow and indistinctly streaked, the uppertail coverts are dark and the tail dark brown with narrow orange to golden edges. The wing coverts are dark brown with yellow-brown edges, and the orange and yellow-orange tips of the median and greater coverts form two wing bars. (German Wikipedia, general species account)

It occurs from Turkey, the southern Caucasus and Iraq through Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to Tibet and western China, and in Afghanistan, northern India and Nepal, and outside the breeding season also in Lebanon, Israel and Syria. It lives in mountains near the tree line in coniferous and mixed woods, preferring woodland edges and streams with open vegetation, at 600–3,000 metres in the Caucasus and 2,000–4,700 metres in the Himalaya. (German Wikipedia, general species account)