I would never have believed that I would report that there are almost as many goldfinches visiting us as there are chaffinches, but it's true. The two species are often found together, probably because they both have an insatiable hunger for sunflower seed kernels, though....
....the goldfinches are much more adept at landing on the feeders than the chaffinches, which seem rather clumsy - the one pictured here is a bit of an exception.
We have two main feeding points on our property. One is on the other side of the road at the front of the property, and it consists of....
....hanging feeders containing peanuts and fat balls, these being most used by the tit family - blue, coal, great and, occasionally, long-tailed - and the occasional greenfinch, and one sunflower feeder that the chaffinches and goldfinches monopolise.
There's a much greater assortment of foods in the back garden but this has less visitors than the front, though one of the visitors here is the occasional and very welcome siskin.
Blackbirds - and we have several - only visit the back garden, as do....
....the wood pigeons from the nearby forestry. The pigeons are a quarrelsome bunch, this one being top bully.
The back garden is also the haunt of our resident robin and one or two dunnocks, and more chaffinches and goldfinches, while some species are totally absent. We never see a house sparrow, though there is a whole bunch of them in a thicket not a hundred metres from our plot, thrushes are absent, and we've only had the very occasional visit from starlings and, happily, crows.
We've been in this house for just over a year so I suppose we should be quite pleased with the number of small birds visiting us, but I'm never satisfied. What the back garden needs is trees for the birds to sit in while contemplating the feast we've laid out for them - but unfortunately trees take time to grow.
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