I hope you enjoyed reading ‘Urban Birder’ David Lindo’s latest piece for Birds magazine on his encounters with bullfinches. If you haven’t read it yet, do turn to page 77 of the Spring 2012 issue.
We asked you to let us know about your own experiences with these chunky finches in the magazine, so I thought I’d share one of my experiences with bullfinches to help get things rolling.
It’s always nerve racking meeting your partner’s parents for the first time, but even more so when you make that first trip to go and stay at their house. Amidst desperately trying to avoid all those social faux pas and remembering my manners on that first weekend in Yorkshire, my eyes were drawn to the bird feeders hanging outside.
Remembering that it is probably quite rude to stare out of the window when I should be making that all important first impression, all hope went out the window (literally) when a rose-breasted vision of beauty dressed in a silver jacket dropped down onto one of the seed feeders: a bullfinch!
From that first encounter forth, it has always been a pleasure to go and visit my girlfriend’s parents, Sue and Graham, because up to two pairs of bullfinches are a near constant presence in both front and back gardens. I should also state that it is also a pleasure to visit Sue and Graham because they are sparkling company and excellent hosts. The finches are merely a bonus! Waking up to the finches’ soft ‘peeuh’ calls outside the window is a very pleasant experience indeed. They are often the first birds I see each day.
As David says in his feature, bullfinches are sadly so much rarer now, making sightings like these even more precious.
Does your home for nature, include a place for bullfinches?
What do your bullfinches do?I’m not lucky enough to have bullfinches coming to my feeders in my garden, but it would be great to hear from anyone who does. Please let us know by posting a comment below (you’ll need to register on the RSPB Community first), or emailing Nature's Home magazine at natureshome@rspb.org.uk and I'll add your stories to the blog.
I couldn't believe it the first time I saw one! Now I get them every day in my small woodland garden. My garden backs on to a small nature walk but I always have food available, it is stocked daily. I have seen as many as four male and three females present at the same time. Wonderful. I feed them mainly on husk free sunflower seeds which all birds seem to enjoy. They stay there for quite a while although they do tend to fend each other off which I find amusing as there is food for all. I am from Cheslyn Hay, Walsall in the West Midlands.
Gill Lalley
Hi - two female and one female bullfinches seen feeding on purple plum tree buds in our garden at in Cheshire. Seen last week and yesterday. Also a pair seen in a nearby garden.
Nick Houseman
I have at least 2 pairs regularly visiting my feeder, which, during the winter, is placed on our patio 10 feet from the living room door. Visitors often ask 'What's that bird with the red front?' I have great delight to tell them! I also have a light hearted competition with my next door neighbour to see who has the most visits of this bird.C A Wills
on 17th December there was a female on my rowan tree and earlier this month two males. Also whilst walking locally in early January I saw two more males along a disused railway track. I live near Northampton. Jean Dun
Yesterday I sat down as usual to work in our home office when our local bullfinch trio turned up. It is the resplendent male who usually catches my eye, but he is generally accompanied by two females, as he was yesterday. We have lived in this house since 2005 though the bullfinches have only been here for about four years. First one, then a pair and now a trio. My garden is rather over-grown with a high unkempt hedge (made of assorted ever-green and deciduous shrubs) around part of it and about a dozen large mature trees (silver birch, leylandii and ash). I do not put out a feeder but my neighbour whose garden is immaculately kept, has several. This morning as I read David Lindo’s article I looked out of the window again and the trio of bullfinches are back. Do bullfinches always form pairs? If so is the extra female I am seeing likely to a daughter? Or is this male gathering himself a little harem? He is very good looking!
Sue Mellor
Like many of those who have already posted on the blog, I am fortunate to live in an area (beneath the Cotswold escarpment between Cheltenham and Gloucester) in which bullfinches seem to be bucking the national trend. Until recently, although they were frequently to be seen and heard in the hedgerows in the lanes round about, they only occasionally visited my garden, usually in very cold weather. Last year, this changed and, from January until late August, hardly a day went by without at least one bullfinch visiting my bird-feeders; there was usually a pair, but sometimes as many as five birds in various combinations of gender. In June, one pair brought their fledged young with them, two or three at a time, over a period of several weeks. (The attached photographs are, unfortunately, rather fuzzy, having necessarily been take through window-glass.) From late August until towards the end of October, however, I saw none at all in the garden, and for the following month sightings were only sporadic, but, at the end of November, they began to come regularly again, at least two males and one female, and have done so ever since. Sunflower seeds are clearly the principal attraction, but they also fossick on the ground beneath the feeders, among the chaffinches and dunnocks that gather there intent on hoovering up anything dropped by the tits, greenfinches and woodpeckers at the peanut-feeders above.
Robin Gilbert
We often have a pair visit our garden (Whitchurch, Cardiff ) and in fact the male was sighted again this morning. Kelvin Hughes
Decades ago, bullfinches were routine, if irregular, visitors to our Hertfordshire garden but not in recent years. In spring 2010, a pair arrived to feast upon the buds of a flowering cherry and were seen on two occasions. No further sightings since then until just after Christmas a pair visited the same tree; then again, ten days ago, two males on the same tree about the same business. I watched them for ten minutes or more casually stripping the early buds tricked by the mild weather. Suddenly they and all the other birds scattered in panic. Over the roof of the house, down the garden and into the laurel bushes at the back, swooped a sparrow hawk. I think all the birds got away but there has been no sight of the bullfinches since.
Except, as I am about to press “send” there’s a pair back again! Nigel Matthews
A pair - male and female - was seen this morning on raspberry canes at Newtown Powys Heather Parry
Whilst practicising with my new camcorder I have managed to film both Red Kites and Bullfinches from my back garden, but was too late on one occasion to film the surprised visit of a Sparrowhawk. I have seen them since and they are usually in pairs which I believe remain together throughout the year. We live in a beatiful rural village called Thorner, only about eight miles from the centre of Leeds, West Yorshire. William Scott