Evening finches

When I get home from school, I sometimes hear the somewhat irritating news that it is my turn to clean our 2 rabbit’s hutch out. Its irritating until the moment I open the back door to the sight of our garden birds enjoying some evening sunshine on our bird feeders! Yesterday was no exception and some of the birds seemed pretty desperate to stock up on those sunflower hearts. Maybe the midday sun is unbearable for our finches…

I usually bring out my camera whilst I am out with the rabbits, so that I can take a photo of anything that arrives whilst I am out there. It seems to be the various finches that like to feed at this time. The bossy Greenfinch in the photo below was daring enough to feed just a couple of metres away from me- although it struggled to find food in that near empty bird feeder. Those sunflower hearts are just too good to resist for the Greenfinches!

Next up on the bird feeder queue was the Goldfinch (pictured below). They are a little bit more shy than the Greenfinches and tend to perch on the shrubs of next-doors garden before feeding on our nyjer seed feeder. I haven’t posted photos of this colourful bird in a while, so I was glad to get a shot of one. The thing I love most about the Goldfinches is that fantastic song they produce when in small groups. They have got to be one of the reasons why it is worth feeding garden birds.

And last, but by no means least is the female Chaffinch in the photo below. It was still quite bright outside when I took the photo, but they are so much harder to photograph than the Greenfinches and Goldfinches. Chaffinch numbers have been very high throughout this month which is why they have featured in many of my previous posts. It was nice to capture the female this time rather than the very bright males.

I thought in the last part of this posting, I would share a video that I meant to show you at least a week ago, but never got around to doing it. In case you didn’t know, we have Blue Tits nesting in a nestbox on our conservatory at the moment, and we think that a female could currently be incubating eggs. One of the Blue Tit parents is spending long periods of time in the nestbox at the moment, whilst our male seems to check on her and feed her every now and then. Because this isn’t a camera nestbox, it’s impossible to be sure, but this is what we think is happening.

The video below shows a very cautious Blue Tit (we think it is the male after ID checking) on the hole of the nestbox. He is seen looking around to make sure the coast is clear to enter the nestbox. Maybe it is me that he has seen, but I thought I was quite well hidden in our office building with my tripod. Ah, well I managed to capture Mr Blue Tit for around 2 minutes before he flew off.

My next posting definitely will include the blossom I wanted to show you. I thought I would show the flower stages of the blossom, so taking the photos has taken a little longer than expected. Still, the post should be all set to go tomorrow, or the day after that. But for now, enjoy your evening finches.