Dear Readers, the wind is whistling down the chimney, the rain is racketing on the skylight and the bird feeders are blowing almost horizontal in the gale, and yet I have indisputable evidence that, for some at least, spring is on the way. Earlier this week, during a muddy, blustery walk in my beloved Coldfall Wood, I heard an extraordinary cacophony coming from an area which has been coppiced, so it is a little more open than other parts of the forest. There is a large dead tree there which, with great wisdom, has been left standing. It was attracting a lot of attention.

The Ring-necked Parakeets, which I’ve written about in an earlier post, have arrived in force to look for nest sites. They investigated the dead tree with much interest, peering into holes, biting off chunks of bark and hanging almost upside down to make sure they had viewed their new ‘property’ from all angles. There was much ‘discussion’ about which was the best site, and much to-ing and fro-ing as each pair flew from hole to hole.

Here, we can see a pair – the male is the one with the dark ring around the neck. What handsome, unexpected birds they are, livening up the woods with all that lime green and teal blue, and the bright red of their beaks! They are Britain’s only parrots, and the RSPB estimates that there are about 8600 breeding pairs in the UK, nearly all of them in urban or suburban areas. A recent study showed that their presence at garden birdtables ‘put off’ other birds, but I would be interested to see, firstly, whether the parrots actually stay for very long, and also how they compare in deterrent effect with other large, energetic birds. Certainly, no one in my garden, not even the Woodpigeons, feeds near the Great Spotted Woodpecker or the Jay when he visits.

By staking a claim to their nest sites now, the parakeets gain an advantage over other birds, who won’t start pairing off until later in the year. By doing this, they compete with Green and Great Spotted Woodpeckers, who would normally use the holes. At present, though, there seems to be enough dead wood around, both in the wood and the cemetery nearby, for all three species to jog along nicely together.

In much of their range overseas, Ring-necked Parakeets have become a significant agricultural pest, and indeed Natural England have put them on their ‘General Licence’ of birds that can be shot without special permission if they are causing damage. One vineyard owner in Kent lost his entire crop of grapes when a flock of the birds descended and ate the lot. However, at present, this is a rare occurrence, and the sight of parakeets setting up home in a North London wood is more a cause for delight than trepidation. Let us be generous here, and enjoy these vivid, feisty birds as they bring a hint of the summer to come to our windswept, damp, dreary landscape.

As a Christmas present to myself, and to the birds, I decided to buy a new bird feeder. I don’t usually include peanuts on the bill of fare, but this terracotta acorn rather took my fancy. I dangled it from a branch of next door’s cherry tree, filled it up, and sat back to see what happened.

“Well,” I thought to myself. “For once, the little birds will have somewhere to feed that isn’t mobbed by squirrels or bigger birds”.

And to start with, I was right.

But not for long.

I have been visited by Jays before. With the oak trees of Coldfall Wood less than a quarter of a mile away, it’s not surprising that they sometimes pop in. In the fall, Jays eat thousands of acorns and bury what they can’t eat immediately. Many an oak seedling has started its life as a forgotten part of a Jay’s larder. But it has been over a year since I’ve seen a Jay. How did this one work out that there was something of interest? I know of their intelligence, but their food-finding ability is uncanny.

The Jay is one of the shyest of the British crows and is also the most brightly coloured. This has not always been to its advantage: the iridescent blue wing feathers were much coveted by milliners, and were used to make fishing flies. These, coupled with its  striking russet-pink body feathers, and the sharp black-and-white markings on the face, combine to make a bird that looks, as W.H. Hudson once wrote, ‘not altogether unworthy of being called the British Bird of Paradise’. Many a novice birdwatcher has mistaken it for something altogether more exotic and rare, such as a Roller.

The bird turned his head from side to side, trying to judge his angle of approach. After all, the feeder was hanging from a flimsy branch, and had no obvious perches.

Not that that was going to stop him.

Each visit was so fast that it felt like a smash and grab. The jay hoovered up a beakful of peanuts and flew off.

It was as if I’d imagined my visitor. Surely nothing so bright and daring could have stopped by this ordinary suburban garden? The feeder swung gently from side to side, rocked by the Jay’s volition, until finally it hung still. When I checked it later, it was as if it had been wiped clean. Not a single peanut was left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I always think of Greenfinches as the cargo planes of the finch world, compared to the Concord-like elegance of the Goldfinches and Chaffinches who normally visit the garden. Greenfinches are heavy-set birds with jutting brows, which makes them appear ‘a bit  ‘ard ‘, as my London relatives would say. Add to this the weighty beak, and the Greenfinch’s dominance on the birdfeeders, and you have a bird of some substance. This little chap dropped in a few days before Christmas, and was gone before I could get my camera properly  focused, as you will no doubt notice.

These creatures are not the psychedelic green of the parakeets – they are more towards the khaki end of the spectrum. However, in the early light when these photos were taken, the bird has a kind of unearthly glow. The yellow feathers in the wing help to identify the bird, which otherwise might be mistaken for a particularly well-fed female sparrow.

Greenfinches are common in some people’s gardens, but not in mine. I am always much cheered when one puts in an appearance. I would love to see the ‘butterfly’ display of the male, who uses exaggeratedly deep, slow wingbeats in order to impress the females with his strength and powers of endurance, but I have not (yet) been lucky enough. Mark Cocker, in ‘Birds Britannica’, describes how the display is accompanied by ‘a liquid twittering song, and often terminates in a drawn-out sneezing note’. Definitely something to watch out for once spring arrives.

This bird has been known as the ‘GreenFynche’ since about 1400.  It was so common in London at the turn of the century that the birds were trapped by the thousands, and sold in the shops on Seven Dials for a few pennies each. I am always puzzled that people eat these creatures – surely there is barely a mouthful of food on each of those little bodies? But then, as we know, all kinds of songbirds are a delicacy even today, and many of our migratory birds fall prey to the taste for such food in Malta and Cyprus and many other Mediterranean countries.

In recent times Greenfinches have become much more common in suburban areas than in agricultural areas, staying fiercely loyal to particular birdtables, and relishing the abundance of Leylandii hedges for roosting and nesting. For many years they have been in the top ten commonest birds in the RSPB’s annual bird survey. However, there has been a falling off recently due to an outbreak of Trichomonosis, a protozoan disease which has already killed off over a third of the Greenfinches in affected areas. This is yet another reason to ensure that feeders are cleaned regularly, and if you are interested in more details, there is information from the RSPB website here.Fortunately, the Greenfinch in my garden seemed full of vim, ready to fight off any delicate Chaffinch or dandy-ish Goldfinch.

It is a real pleasure to walk to the kitchen, bleary-eyed and in need of a cup of tea, and to suddenly be jolted into action by the sight of an unfamiliar visitor on the bird feeder. Much as I love my ‘regular’ birds, I am also delighted when someone unusual turns up. After all, isn’t the festive season about providing hospitality to wanderers of all descriptions?

 

Dear Reader, the run-up to Christmas has been especially chaotic this year. My mother had a stroke a few months ago, so there have been lots of trips backwards and forwards to Dorset, where she lives. On every visit Mum looked better and stronger, and I was looking forward to Mum and Dad’s trip to to stay with me in London, where they would spend Christmas being pampered and stuffed full of food. Then, last week, she was back in hospital with a suspected heart attack. It looked as if Christmas would have to be cancelled. But, praise be, it turned out that Mum had not had a heart attack after all, so Christmas was back on again as planned. Well, as you can imagine all this has left me in  something of a tizzy, and rather behind with my festive plans. Friday morning saw me fighting my way through the sharp-elbowed hordes on Oxford Street in my rush to catch up.  By the time I got home, I knew that only one thing would calm my ‘monkey mind’, and that was to spend an hour sitting in the kitchen, just watching the birds through the window. I wanted to share them with you all, so that maybe you can have a few minutes of peace too.

How beautiful these creatures are, and how frantically they attack the bird feeders. December 21st is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, and the birds are desperate to pack in as much food as they can in order to survive another long, cold night.

This male Chaffinch has been hanging around the garden for a couple of weeks now. He looks plump, but is very sluggish, and a close look at his feet and legs shows that he has some kind of fungal infection. This has put me on red alert with regard to feeder hygiene, so I’m cleaning them regularly to try to prevent it being passed on to the other birds. So far it seems to have worked, as the rest look very spry. But I do feel sorry for him. He isn’t ill enough to let me catch him and see if a vet can help, but he clearly isn’t well.

The Goldfinches are around all day, and are looking very spruced up. I love the Byzantine black and white feathers on their wings, and their cherry-red faces. There can be up to a dozen in the garden at any time. They seem to coexist happily with the Chaffinches, without too many squawking matches. The same can’t be said for the Starlings, however.

At this time of year, I can see why these birds are called Starlings – their iridescent plumage looks like the Milky Way. Once upon a time, Starlings were migratory, but more and more stay put all year round now, especially in cities, where the temperatures are slightly higher and there is plenty of food around. They are easily the most argumentative creatures in the garden.

Once the Collared Dove appears, the finches retreat to a safe distance, but not for long – they will feed quite happily from the other side of the feeder. This particular bird is very dominant, and will chase away the other doves. He is only ‘trumped’ when a Woodpigeon arrives, and even then gives place reluctantly.

Then, there are the Tits.

They are so hard to photograph properly – they remind me of bees, here for a second and then off again. They will never hang around on the feeder to eat. With them, it’s all ‘grab and go’. This Blue Tit had snatched a seed, but then headed off into the hedge to eat it.

This Coal Tit was even faster. It’s a miracle that I got a photograph at all.

And this is a very fine Great Tit, eyeing up the bird table from next door’s cherry tree.

Now, this cheered me up a lot.

This is the first House Sparrow I’ve (partly) seen for quite a while, so it’s good to know that they’re still around. Only last week I was mourning the decrease in their numbers, but here, at least, there is still one, and probably more that I haven’t seen.

I noticed some other birds turning over the dead lilac leaves and rummaging amongst the shales.

The resident Blackbirds are the only pair in the garden, but it will be interesting to see how long they are alone for. In winter, Blackbirds become much more tolerant of other members of their species, and often birds appear from other parts of the country, and even mainland Europe. I once saw twenty-four blackbirds in the single acre of Culpeper Community Garden in Islington, and I’ve seen a dozen in my tiny garden when it’s snowing. But for the moment, these two are alone, and, having eaten every rowan berry and crab apple on my juvenile trees, are now down to foraging in the undergrowth. I’m hoping they make take a shine to the organic pomegranate that I’ve seeded and put on the bird table. Nothing but the best for my visitors!

I was very pleased to see this Dunnock as well. This shy, mouse-like little bird has the sex life of a Borgia, and I shall doubtless do a whole blog post about their shenanigans next year. Suffice it to say that in the spring everything goes bonkers. The male entices the female to copulate by showing her his armpit (something that rarely works in the human world). He undergoes a complete character transformation, sitting at the top of a tree and singing his rather underpowered song with all the gusto he can muster. The female, however, is something of a free spirit, and will mate with a whole variety of males if she can get away from her ‘husband’. There are excellent reasons for this behaviour, as there invariably are in nature, and as soon as I see the Dunnocks in the garden getting excited I shall sally forth with an explanation.

And, it being almost Christmas, it was perfect to see this bird eyeing up the pomegranate.

There are few birds more confiding than the Robin, and a walk through Coldfall Wood is often interrupted by the appearance of a strident little ball of orange energy erupting from the holly. They are around all year, but I seem to notice them more in winter, when their chief activity is finding food. A male and female Robin will often have territories that are next to one another in the winter. In the spring, they’ll merge their landholdings in order to provide enough food for their nestlings. In winter, it’s back to separate areas. Having access to a food source is as important for Robins as it is for all the other birds in the garden, and in a hard winter it can really impact on how many survive.

So, after my hour I felt relaxed and ready to jump back into the cooking, wrapping and card writing, with a fresh sense of perspective and a renewed lightness of heart. I wish the very same for all of you.

 

I have always loved crows. There is nothing delicate about them, nothing melodic or dainty. They are big rambunctious bruisers, adaptable and ready to feed on anything. Two crows are omnipresent outside the Kentucky Fried Chicken at the top of my road, and have brought up a whole brood on chips and the remains of Bargain Buckets. On Friday morning, a pair of crows were perched alongside the southbound platform at East Finchley station, eyeing up a dead rat between the tube lines and trying to decide how long it was until the next train.

Coldfall Wood has a large population of crows – I once counted thirty quartering the playing fields, stopping occasionally to hammer the frozen ground with their chisel-shaped beaks.

But on Monday, the woods were filled with sunshine, which gradually increased to a kind of crescendo that lifted my spirits.

As usual, I was walking with my camera, wondering what the story would be for this week’s blog. Because there is always a story, I just have to recognise it. Maybe it was the wren, picking his way through the coppiced wood?

And then my camera battery started flashing red, and I decided that I would give up and head home. I crossed the bridge over the Everglades winter pond, and something made me look through the trees to where the stream tumbles through and over the tree roots.

Crows were gathering in the shallow pools. They seemed a little nervous. Then, one of the crows ducked her head under the water and started to bathe.

The water flew up like a liquid fire-work, the sun catching the droplets as they cascaded down.

The other crows picked through the debris for food, or waited patiently for their turn.

It seemed like a ritual, something that the birds did regularly for reasons that went beyond just keeping their plumage clean, and I felt as if I shouldn’t be seeing it. There are some things that are not ours to look at, and sometimes creatures just have to be left alone.

The inequality of our relationship with other animals is clear – we use them more or less as we feel fit. But it is difficult to look into the bold stare of a crow and not recognise that there is ‘someone’ there. And where does it lead us, this recognition? If it makes me feel a little uncomfortable, a little guilty, inclined to put my camera away and leave the birds to complete their bath in peace, surely that’s no bad thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the first truly frosty day this winter, I headed through Coldfall Wood to the playing fields beyond. I normally view this as a rather bleak area, with little wildlife activity, but my assumptions were challenged by a flock of Black-headed Gulls marching back and forth between the goal-posts, and hammering into the frozen ground in search of worms and grubs. Every few minutes they took flight, disturbed by an eager dog or a intrepid jogger.

Normally when I see Black-headed Gulls, they are skirmishing above a pond or some other water body. Last week, for example,  I watched them on the Boating Lake at Hampstead Heath. They were in an argumentative mood, snatching bread from the Coots, who are no mean pugilists themselves. They landed on the backs  of Mallards to tear the crusts from their beaks, and then proceeded to mug one another. All the time they yelled at one another, shrieking and carrying-on. Their Latin name, Chroicocephalus ridibundus, means ‘Laughing Gull’, although ‘Quarrelling Gull’ might be a better title.

Here on the frozen football field they were much more subdued, however. They quartered the ground methodically, marching back and forth in little groups. Many of the Black-headed Gulls that we see at this time of year are not from the British population, which numbers 140,000 breeding pairs but from the over 2 million birds who arrive when the winter comes. Ringing studies have shown that the migrant birds come from all over Europe, from Finland to Switzerland. Birds are often loyal to their chosen wintering grounds – one bird who overwintered as a juvenile in Molesey in 1936 was ringed, and was subsequently recovered in the same area nineteen years later.

‘Black-headed Gull’ is something of a misnomer,  of course. For most of the year, the birds have just a couple of tiny crescent of dark feathers on their heads. Even in summer plumage, their heads are chocolate brown, not black.

Black-headed Gulls, like so many urban birds, are opportunists. They weren’t spotted in London in large numbers until the severe winters of 1880/81, when the Thames started to freeze. Initially, the birds were often shot, but by 1892 the powers-that-be decided that having people discharging firearms around the capital was probably not a good idea. Londoners being Londoners, folk took to feeding the gulls instead, and one chap was noted for selling sprats to feed to the birds.

As the years went on, the birds advanced up the Thames, and found much to approve of when they reached St James’s Park. There were plenty of handouts during the day, and the birds learned to roost in the trees during the night, the first time that such behaviour had been noted. They also discovered the great reservoirs of London, and used them as roosts. They fed not only on boating lakes and in parks, but at sewage farms, landfill sites and open fields, where they can often, to this day,  be seen following the tractors as they plough. The flash of their silver-white wings against the brown earth makes me think of kinder days, when there was more left over for our fellow creatures.

These days, Black-headed Gulls nationally have an Amber conservation status, a result of a fall in population of 49 percent over the past twenty-five years. This may be due to the closure of the landfill sites which used to provide them with so much food, and may also be caused by the effects of chemical pollutants which reduce their breeding success.

Although the status of these gulls is far from clear, their eggs are still much sought-after by chefs. Traditionally, they are eaten hard-boiled with celery salt, but Le Gavroche offered them in a dish described as  Lightly Seasoned Brown Crab with Gull Egg, Peach and New Season Fresh Almonds last year. To collect the eggs a licence is needed, and these are generally only given to people with ‘traditional claims’ – often those who work on large estates which include Black-headed Gull breeding colonies . The Macmillan Cancer Support charity runs a ‘Gulls’ Eggs City Luncheon‘ in the Merchant Taylor’s Hall for City professionals every year to raise funds.

While the collectors claim that this is a ‘sustainable practice’ it can surely only put further stress on birds who are already, by their declining numbers, showing that they need to be helped rather than exploited. However, with the eggs being sold for 5.99 GBP each last year, there must be a very lucrative market for them. London Fine Foods describes these eggs as ‘a joy to experience’. Personally, I’d rather experience the joy of one of these:

Books used for this post were Birds Britannica by Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey, and The Birds of London by Andrew Self.

 

This graceful, cloud-coloured bird is a familiar visitor in the gardens and parks of the suburbs of London, including East Finchley, where they regularly visit my bird feeder.

In the photo above, the two birds seemed to get along quite amiably, rather than attempting to stab one another. However, they can be surprisingly assertive, especially in the breeding season – I have seen a male pursue a female from chimney to roof to tree for over an hour, making its high-pitched, rather demented call for the whole time (to listen to this, find the audio section here ).  On landing, the male  often gives what Dominic Couzens describes as ‘several triumphant nasal calls – rather like those children’s trumpets that unroll when you blow them and tickle people’s faces’.

Although there are nearly a million pairs of these birds in the UK, they only arrived here in the 1950’s, with the first successful London chicks raised  in 1961. The record for Collared Dove breeding is five broods in a single year, and as with all pigeons and doves the youngsters are fed on ‘pigeon milk’, a crop secretion that is produced when the adult birds have adequate food. Their rise has been truly astonishing.

Sadly, the increase in the numbers of Collared Doves might have come as Turtle Dove territories were vacated – this bird was common in the 1930’s, but is now more or less extinct as a breeding bird in London. The Turtle Dove’s decline has been attributed to the desertification of Sahelian Africa, where the birds spend much of their lives, and also the brutal persecution of migratory birds in the Mediterranean, with the hunters of Malta bearing a great deal of the responsibility for the birds’ demise in Western Europe. The final straw may be the increased intensification of agriculture, with much less spilled seed and fewer weedy patches available for the migrants who do arrive. This beautiful bird, memorialised in The Twelve Days of Christmas, has lost three-quarters of its population and a quarter of its range in the past three decades.

As usual, Birds Britannica by Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey is a source of many fascinating facts about the Collared Dove. For example, in Germany, the bird is known by the name Die Fernsehtaube, ‘the television dove’, because it often calls from the aerial on the roof.

The book also includes the explanation for the Collared Dove’s Latin name, ‘decaocto’:

‘A poor maid was servant to a very hard-hearted lady, who gave her as wages no more than eighteen pieces a year. The maid prayed to the Gods that she would like it to be known to the world how miserably she was paid by her mistress. Thereupon Zeus created this Dove which proclaims an audible ‘deca-octo’ to all the world to this very day’.

I have to say that I am very fond of Collared Doves. They have a sleek elegance compared to the rather fluffier, plumper appearance of the Woodpigeon, and they are confiding birds, only flying off at the last possible moment when I approach and then hanging around to see if any more seed is going to appear. They mate for life, and seem to do everything together – when I see one bird, I can be sure that the other is not far away. Sometimes, I spot them sitting in the whitebeam preening one another, the preenee closing his or her eyes in obvious bliss. They are another one of those peripheral birds, going about their business with little fuss and attracting no notice. But the garden would be much the poorer without their gentle presence.

 

 

 

I live in the suburb of East Finchley, on the Northern line in London. I am only  twenty minutes from the centre of town and my environment is very urban, with buses ploughing up and down the High Street and the occasional sound of police car sirens. However, the word ‘Finchley’ is said to come from Anglo-Saxon, meaning ‘place of the finches’ and is an indication of Finchley’s much more rural past. This week, the place has certainly been living up to its name. Furthermore, I finally got paid for my business trip to Prague, so I have treated myself to a new camera. I am having so much fun with it that I can scarcely contain myself, but for everyone’s sake, I shall try to, in case I outstay my welcome.

Firstly, the Chaffinch. What elegant birds they are, with their fluttering, moth-like flight, long tails and smokey colours. The female Chaffinch is sometimes mistaken for a female sparrow, but the white patches on the ‘shoulders’ and the double white wingbars are a dead giveaway. Plus, no self-respecting Chaffinch ever said ‘chirp’. The females say very little, and the males say ‘pink’, as if telling the world what colour they are. In fact, the word ‘Finch’ comes from the Old English ‘Fink’, which is what a Chaffinch’s call sounds like.

During the breeding season, however,  the repetitive ‘pink-pink’ call is joined by a song, described by Mark Cocker in Birds Britannica as being likened by one ornithologist to  ‘a cricketer’s run-up to the wicket, with the cadence as the bowling action’. The bird can repeat the call up to six times a minute, and up to three thousand times a day, and to hear it just click here and play the wonderful British Library recording. This call, and the voracity with which the bird sang, led to the male Chaffinch being used for singing competitions in the East End of London right through to the end of the nineteenth century. Two male Chaffinches would be placed in cages next to one another, usually in a smokey pub, and would start to sing as soon as they saw one another. The winner would be the bird who made the most repetitions of his call in the time allowed. In addition to losing their freedom, these little birds would sometimes also be blinded, in order to inure them to distraction and to increase their dependence on their owners. Fortunately this particular cruelty no longer takes place in the UK, although within living memory people would trap wild finches (particularly Goldfinch and Chaffinch) to crossbreed them with canaries. These birds were called ‘mules’, and would sometimes retain the bright plumage of their wild parents, coupled with the trilling song of the canary, and were readily available for purchase in pet shops.

The latin name of the Chaffinch, Fringilla coelebs, means ‘celibate finch’. This is probably because, whilst most finches can be seen in groups even during the breeding season, Chaffinches tend to be territorial while they are nesting, and to fight off any other Chaffinches who try to muscle in. Unlike other finches, Chaffinches feed their young on insects, and so they will protect the particular trees and bushes that harbour them. Other finches, who eat seeds, have to range far and wide in order to find enough, and so they don’t need all this territorial nonsense, and are rather more sociable.

In the winter, though, this territorial behaviour breaks down. Finches from Scandinavia turn up in the UK, fleeing the much harsher winter, and form into flocks. When the temperature drops and the hours of daylight become fewer, the birds stand more chance of finding food if they hang around together, and even the Chaffinches forget about keeping themselves to themselves, and gather, sometimes in enormous numbers.

Now, let’s talk about the Goldfinch.

Look at the long, tweezer-like bill of this finch, and compare it to the more all-purpose appendage of the Chaffinch. Goldfinches love the seeds of teasel and thistle (the Latin name for the finch, Carduelis carduelis, derives from the word for thistle), although here the bird is making do with sunflower seeds. I remember watching a ‘charm’ of Goldfinches working over a stand of thistle-heads like a troop of monkeys, hanging from the stalks, making their tinkly calls to one another, their wings flashing saffron as they flew from one plant to another. And then, as soon as they’d arrived, they were gone.

At the bottom of the picture above, you can see a (somewhat blurry) juvenile Goldfinch: as yet there are no red, white or black markings on the head, but the gold bars on the wings are a signature.

Now, have a look at the Goldfinch above. You need a good view, but it is possible to tell the sex of a Goldfinch from the red markings on its face. If the red patch seems to cut through the eye, the bird is a female. If it extends behind the eye, the bird is a male. Usually. Though as any birder will tell you, things are not always straightforward, especially when it’s pouring down with rain and you have a two-second glance of a Goldfinch from a murky hide, with someone’s elbow in your ear and someone else munching through tuna sandwiches and a packet of crisps.

The Goldfinch is also a bird which features in over five hundred medieval and Renaissance paintings, often with Mary and the infant Jesus. It was believed to have health-giving properties, and I have lost track of the number of images I’ve seen of chubby infants with unfortunate Goldfinches on strings. In the picture below, two toddlers molest a Goldfinch.

Here, Tiepolo shows the Virgin and Child plus Goldfinch:

And here, a fifteenth century artist, whose name is lost to us, paints the Madonna and Child with a Goldfinch.

Why the Goldfinch? Probably because of its association with thistles (and hence the Crown of Thorns), and also because of its red face – the Robin is said to have acquired its red breast through plucking the thorns and puncturing itself, and maybe the Goldfinch was seen to have been similarly helpful. But, if we dig deeper, the Goldfinch was seen as a fertility symbol long before Christianity: Pliny has described how the bird was linked with the Roman deity Juno, goddess of light, childbirth and fertility. It’s likely that the symbolisim of the Goldfinch has been co-opted several times, from original Pagan beliefs, via Juno and then to the Virgin Mary. What a weight of history for this acrobatic, autumnally-coloured, enchanting little bird to carry.

As autumn wears on, it’s well worth taking a close look at any flocks of finches that turn up on the feeders. Sometimes, much rarer birds, such as Siskins, Bramblings, Redpolls and Linnets get mixed into the general bonhomie, and if I spot any I will definitely share them with you. But, really, when people say that British birds are boring, just point them in the general direction of these two gorgeous species. They were flying here when my house was a twinkle in a builder’s eye, and when there was a gibbet at the bottom of the road, and for many thousands of years before that. With our help, maybe they’ll be sparkling like little suns for many years to come.