I have mentioned before that I am blessed with a garden which has a decent number of bird species visiting every week. I don’t get that many rarities and there are some birds that are common to others that I have never seen in my garden. I have got the most common of the species covered though.
I have a strangely designed house which is effectively Z shaped as it is built into a hillside, this means I have a two storey bungalow, and I can watch the birds from my bed. You sometimes have the oddest of thoughts as you watch the comings and goings from the feeding stations as you have a weekend lie in.
I was laying there watching the Greenfinches come and go from one of the feeders, and it suddenly struck me that they are not really green are they? They come in one of the widest variety of colours of all the birds that visit my garden. They range from the subtle olive colour to an almost canary yellow, but none of them are what you would really call green! The females are a more buff colour, and slightly smaller than the male. The black eye feathers always give them the impression that they have had a hard night out the evening before, and look just a little hung-over, or they have smudged their mascara. They have certainly arrived in my garden in numbers in the past few days since I switched back to a sunflower mix bird food.
And then there are Goldfinches … are they really gold in colour? The first thing I always notice is their bright red faces that look like they have been made up like a circus performer. I have a well-stocked Nyger seed feeder that they frequent, their small beaks adapted for removing these small seeds from teasel heads. Their slow invasion of our gardens has continued, with them up another place on this year’s Big Garden Birdwatch to the seventh most common garden bird in the country. I consider them the most colourful bird in my garden, along with the Blue Tit; both birds would not look out of place in a rainforest.
I once was told there is no black in nature. This is true of the Blackbird. The female is a wonderful nutty brown colour, with the subtle thrushes’ steaks on her breast. The male is almost black, but the bright splash of orange on his bill and his eye ring are most certainly eye catching, which is a good thing, as that is exactly what the girls are looking for; their virility is judged on the brightness of these features.
Perhaps the biggest misnomer of all is the Robin Red Breast. Have a close look; for it is not red, it is most definitely orange! The reason for this is historical. There are currently 596 species on the official British Bird List, but the bird occupying the number one slot is the humble Robin. The first recorded mention of a Robin is found in historical records of St Serf, a Scottish Monk in AD 530. They were originally called Redbreasts, simply because there was no word for the colour orange until the sixteenth century when the fruit was discovered. You see the fruit leant its name to the colour, and not the other way about, in much the same way Brazil was named after the nut and not the nut after the country.
Whatever colour and whatever the misleading names, they are all most welcome in my garden, and make for a fantastic kaleidoscope of flashing patterns as they zip around the feeders, and I can enjoy natures fantastic colour palette from the comfort of my pillow!
If you enjoy reading my blogs and would like to hear more on how I became a blogger for the We Love Wales! Pages I am appearing at the RHS Show in Cardiff this Saturday at 2pm to give a short talk on my journey from the Lab Bench to Volunteer. Please come along, I would love to see you and meet some fellow nature lovers.