Birds of Conservation Concern and Winter Wear Discussions

For our bird character, originally we were going to go with the Bullfinch species, but after looking at photos of the bird I realized the black colouring around the head might make it more difficult to see the eyes and expressions. I then had a look on the RSPB website and found out the Bullfinch has Amber status for Conservation Concern. For our underlying message in the film, I thought it might be better for our character to be a bird from the Red list. I researched different birds on the red list and came across the Linnet:
Link to RSPB Linnet page

A quick colour study paint in Photoshop

Sketches of different poses of a Linnet

Linnet is the current favourite that I've found - really like the colours, think the orange brown colour on the wings fits in well with the autumn colours, it's grey around the eye so expressions will be easier to see, and the more pink-red hue on the front might be better than just a bright red (which would have blended it in to the background too much with all the autumn colours?...)
It also feeds on seeds and can be found in gardens which is suitable for the story.

Some other suitable species I found were:
House Sparrow
Lesser Redpole
Hawfinch

Had a look over the human character design with Sheng. Now that the owner will be out in the garden with the dog for the duration of the film, her clothes needed some slight adjustment. Such as making her sleeves longer. The scarf has been adjusted so we don't have to deal with rigging a scarf... but we did like the scarf. It was also discussed whether maybe she could have a woolly hat, with maybe cropped hair? Or maybe even earmuffs! Which maybe would help show that it's a colder weather season and also maybe explains why she doesn't notice anything that's going on because she can't hear as well with her ears cover... I think some sketches to explore some winter wear variations is needed...