Whether you’re in Fleetwood or Lytham the Fylde Coast seems to be a popular place for Goldfinches! Keep your ears out for the twittering and chattering of these engaging little birds as they go about their business – oblivious to all of us!
More about Goldfinches
These are very engaging birds. In little flocks and family parties of half a dozen or more called ‘charms’, they dip and dart and fly together and fight. Goldfinches twitter with an unmistakable noise once you know that it’s them.
Their red hats are striking and they really are lovely little birds – quite easy to identify too.
They’re seedeaters of course with a beak like this. Feeding on weed seeds and fruit, plus a few insects especially for their young. Their beaks are adapted just for the job of cracking seeds.
Apparently, in the late 1800’s their numbers dropped to dangerously low levels. This was because of trapping for the pet trade – they were popular cage birds because of their tinkling song. Back in 1860, 132,000 birds a year were caught in Sussex alone.
Did you know? Saving the Goldfinch from the trapper was one of the first successful tasks of the Society for the Protection of Birds (later to become the RSPB).
Now they seem to be everywhere. We’ve even spotted nest in the trees of our Fylde Coast town centres and high streets. So there’s clearly something about this place that they like, because they really are everywhere!
Attract Goldfinches to your Garden
You might see an odd Goldfinch flying through, but you’ll need a few things to get them to visit regularly.
Perhaps most importantly the biggest bribe is food. They adore Niger seed – those tiny little black seeds that get everywhere!
If you’re going to feed them, buy a small bag of food and one of the special feeders. They have tiny holes where the birds peck the seeds out one at a time.
Not sure whether this is the first thing that would attract them, or whether it would be bushes and trees. But a garden and plants where they can shelter, feed and nest is certainly an advantage.
The other thing that all birds need is water. A big garden saucer, kept clean and topped up with fresh water will be appreciated so much!
Goldfinches in my Garden
When we lived in Yorkshire, we had a large garden, full of trees and dense with established plants. We always fed the birds and had loads of different species. Most were permanent features and bred in our garden or nearby. When the Goldfinches turned up I was thrilled, and bought Niger seed to feed them. But they didn’t nest with us (that I knew of), despite running an avian Hilton.
Then we moved to the coast. It’s a concrete jungle with a sparse tree and shrub corridors from sheltered inland spots to the seafront. So the only birds in our garden when we arrived here were loads of starlings and a few sparrows.
One of our first tasks was to create a garden from our own patch of concrete. Over the years we’ve fought the salt and wind and succeeded to a reasonable degree. Actually it’s handy that trees can’t continue out of control skywards, and makes for much less pruning!
As our garden has established, more birds have come calling. Including a very unwelcome bird of prey – a sparrowhawk or maybe a kestrel. Much to our delight, the Goldfinches moved in. Their chicks were ready for fledging the nest before we spotted it – a perfect tight little ball in the tops of the hedgerow.
So I obediently bought a feeder and Niger seed and they were in seventh heaven. They return most years to build in our dense, prickly hawthorn hedge.
I find it hard to empty bedding plants in autumn until they are totally dead, so one year a couple of wall baskets remained through winter. I stood inside, watching them completely strip the coir basket liner, then decapitating the remains of the previous years silver leafy bedding plants. All the bits were taken to another perfect little tight nest ready for the next brood of baby clowns!
We’ve got what looks like a gardeners garden. But we plant the right types of plants for flowers through the year, with shelter for birds to roost, hide and nest in. And we don’t use chemicals and sprays. It supports an amazing amount of wildlife. The bonus is that we have very few pests because our feathery little friends hoover them all up!
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