Charles James Sharp, CC BY-SA 3.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
| Carduelis carduelis |
Happy Darwin Day! I wasn’t too sure if I’d still be engaging
with the National Days of the Year which consumed so much of my 2020, but I’ve
found it does give me inspiration for what to write about, so today’s bird, in
honour of Charles Darwin, is the Goldfinch, after his extensive studies of the
finches of the Galapagos.
The Goldfinch is, like most other finches, a small and
colourful bird, with tawny feathers interspersed by flashes of black and yellow
on the wings, and red and white on the face – features shared by both sexes. Their
bills are fine and pointed, allowing them to specialise in the usually inaccessible
seeds of thistles, dandelions, and teasels, as well as small invertebrates, and
even the bird table or feeder in your back garden.
They can frequently be seen in small flocks throughout the
year, gathered in scattered trees or bushes, and distinguishable from a
distance by their bouncing flight and liquid trilling song – a little like the
Summer staple, the Skylark – though Goldfinches are known to migrate south in times
of harsh weather. They are Summer residents as far east as Russia but can be
found throughout most of Mainland Europe all year around. In the spring,
however, there have been records of as many as 1.2million breeding pairs in the
UK, their nests built in loose colonies, typical of cardueline finches. These
nests are often quite deep, and composed of grass, moss, roots, wool, and hair.
Remarkably, they can have up to 2 broods of 5-6 eggs a year, which certainly
calls for a big home!
Facts taken from: the RSPB, Wildlife Trusts, the British Trust
for Ornithology, and the RSPB’s ‘Birds of Britain and Europe’ Guidebook by Rob
Hume.
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/goldfinch/
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/birds/finches-and-buntings/goldfinch
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0241302242/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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