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The Year of the Goldfinch
2011 (in spite of many other defining features) will almost certainly go down in family memory as the 'year of the goldfinch'.
If you look in bird books, you will discover that goldfinches rarely visit garden feeders, but can occasionally be tempted by niger seed feeders.
In the 30 years we've lived here, this has always been true - except that we couldn't even tempt them with niger seed.
This year is different.
Whether it is an evolutionary genetic change or simply learned behaviour, I don't know, but this year the goldfinches have started eating sunflower seeds. And they've brought along the kids. And goldfinches have more than one clutch a year.
Suddenly, our garden is filled by a small flock of goldfinches!
They're delightful little birds, red faces on the adults and vibrant yellow wing flashes on all ages. I can see the newly-fledged babies sitting on the washing line, flapping their wings like mad to display the gold flashes to dad to encourage him to come and feed them. (It's likely to be dad - the female often sits on the next clutch of eggs while dad goes off to feed the first brood.)
We've even got more sparrows than I've seen in many years. Twenty or so used to be fairly normal for us, but in recent years we've rarely seen more than five or six. This week, there's a flock of around a dozen paying regular visits.
We're having to refill our two large seed feeders every couple of days now, but we don't mind a bit! (one of sunflower seeds and one mixed seed. The goldfinches just use sunflower seed, the sparrows like both)
If you look in bird books, you will discover that goldfinches rarely visit garden feeders, but can occasionally be tempted by niger seed feeders.
In the 30 years we've lived here, this has always been true - except that we couldn't even tempt them with niger seed.
This year is different.
Whether it is an evolutionary genetic change or simply learned behaviour, I don't know, but this year the goldfinches have started eating sunflower seeds. And they've brought along the kids. And goldfinches have more than one clutch a year.
Suddenly, our garden is filled by a small flock of goldfinches!
They're delightful little birds, red faces on the adults and vibrant yellow wing flashes on all ages. I can see the newly-fledged babies sitting on the washing line, flapping their wings like mad to display the gold flashes to dad to encourage him to come and feed them. (It's likely to be dad - the female often sits on the next clutch of eggs while dad goes off to feed the first brood.)
We've even got more sparrows than I've seen in many years. Twenty or so used to be fairly normal for us, but in recent years we've rarely seen more than five or six. This week, there's a flock of around a dozen paying regular visits.
We're having to refill our two large seed feeders every couple of days now, but we don't mind a bit! (one of sunflower seeds and one mixed seed. The goldfinches just use sunflower seed, the sparrows like both)