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Goldfinch on my lawn

wildlife, gardening, environment, Rural living, Pets and Vets
EssDeeAitch
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Goldfinch on my lawn

#412613

Postby EssDeeAitch » May 17th, 2021, 7:44 am

Yesterday I saw two Goldfinch feeding on grass seed on my (north east England) front lawn (at last a reason for less frequent mowing?) I have never seen this before but it was lovely to see. When hanging Niger seed (their seed of choice apparently), they are very, very infrequent visitors wich is a great pity they are lovely birds.

Has any other fools seen lawn feeding by Goldfinches?

sg31
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Re: Goldfinch on my lawn

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Postby sg31 » May 17th, 2021, 10:03 am

They can be exceedingly common in this area of north Worcestershire. Usually we can see a few each day from our kitchen windoiw but the yyear before last the farmer next door didn't cut his fields and we had 4 to 6 flocks of up to 100 birds in different areas feasting on the seed. This went on for about 6 weeks before they moved on.

They are very pretty little things and a delight to see, my favourites though are the long tailed tits who are also regular visitors to our garden.

EssDeeAitch
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Re: Goldfinch on my lawn

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Postby EssDeeAitch » May 17th, 2021, 10:42 am

sg31 wrote:They can be exceedingly common in this area of north Worcestershire. Usually we can see a few each day from our kitchen windoiw but the yyear before last the farmer next door didn't cut his fields and we had 4 to 6 flocks of up to 100 birds in different areas feasting on the seed. This went on for about 6 weeks before they moved on.

They are very pretty little things and a delight to see, my favourites though are the long tailed tits who are also regular visitors to our garden.


That must have been really nice to see. We very rarely get long-tailed tits but they are lovely.

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:Sadly, locally, we have far too many cats that spend a lot of time outside.


They are a dreadful nuisance and I forgive you if you take the law into your own hands!

Mike88
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Re: Goldfinch on my lawn

#412669

Postby Mike88 » May 17th, 2021, 11:09 am

Most years there are many goldfinch on my lawn. They tend to arrive in large numbers and disappear quickly. I haven't seen any this year.

My biggest problem is seagulls. I live on the coast and have to pay a man to destroy nests to prevent the parent gulls from attacking us. Goldfinches and cats are not a problem in comparison.

Itsallaguess
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Re: Goldfinch on my lawn

#412684

Postby Itsallaguess » May 17th, 2021, 11:35 am

EssDeeAitch wrote:
When hanging Niger seed (their seed of choice apparently), they are very, very infrequent visitors which is a great pity they are lovely birds.


I love Goldfinches, and we have a large number of regular welcome visitors, but on your specific point regarding Niger seeds, whilst they do clearly love those seeds, we found them to be both messy and for the Goldfinches to be very wasteful with them, with the discarded husks and ground-spilt seeds leaving a mess behind that we quickly grew tired of, along with grounded seeds that often sprouted and needed clearing up along with all the other mess.

The key issue that we found with Niger seed is that spilt or discarded wastage never seemed to be picked up by either the Goldfinches or any other ground-feeding birds, unlike most of the other regular seed from the other feeders that may end up on the ground in a similar way...

Because of this, some time ago we moved away from Niger seeds to Sunflower Hearts, available relatively cheaply from Wilko's, and we've seen no drop-off at all in the number of Goldfinch visitors, with the great added bonus that all the spilt or discarded elements of the Sunflower Hearts are now picked up by our other ground-feeding birds, with almost no mess or wastage at all....

I agree that they're lovely birds, and we do out best to attract and maintain what visitors we can...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

AleisterCrowley
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Re: Goldfinch on my lawn

#412687

Postby AleisterCrowley » May 17th, 2021, 11:43 am

I spotted a couple in the hedge on my walk yesterday - lovely birds, one of my favourites
I've seen one in my (v small ) garden once, but 'Bastard & Bastard' ,the local ginger cats, discourage ground feeding

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Re: Goldfinch on my lawn

#412784

Postby madhatter » May 17th, 2021, 5:48 pm

I would certainly agree about the fondness of Goldfinches for sunflower hearts. I put out both niger seed and sunflower hearts, and while both get some activity, there is a strong preference for the s/f hearts, and the niger seed is more often used as overspill, when the hearts feeder is fully occupied (which doesn’t take very many birds. They like to be in groups but don’t seem to much like sharing a feeder) and the niger seed feeder supplies one or two who are chased off the s/f hearts.

I very occasionally see a flock of long-tailed tits in the winter in the garden but they are mostly on trees and bushes, and rarely go near a feeder.

scotia
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Re: Goldfinch on my lawn

#413083

Postby scotia » May 18th, 2021, 9:53 pm

Going back 20 years I would never have seen goldfinches in my garden (Central Scotland) - but plenty chaffinches and greenfinches. Now the goldfinches are the most common birds on the sunflower heart feeders.

sg31
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Re: Goldfinch on my lawn

#413190

Postby sg31 » May 19th, 2021, 11:06 am

madhatter wrote:I would certainly agree about the fondness of Goldfinches for sunflower hearts. I put out both niger seed and sunflower hearts, and while both get some activity, there is a strong preference for the s/f hearts, and the niger seed is more often used as overspill, when the hearts feeder is fully occupied (which doesn’t take very many birds. They like to be in groups but don’t seem to much like sharing a feeder) and the niger seed feeder supplies one or two who are chased off the s/f hearts.

I very occasionally see a flock of long-tailed tits in the winter in the garden but they are mostly on trees and bushes, and rarely go near a feeder.


I love watching the long tailed tits when they visit the feeder. They usually arrive in small groups of 3 or 4 and sit in the hedge or willow tree, in total maybe 20 birds will arrive over a minute or so. They will visit the feeder 2 or 3 at a time spend 20 or 30 seconds feeding then fly back to the hedge/willow, as they leave they will be replaced by others in the flock. Each bird will visit the feeder several times. Eventually they have had thir fill and they will leave as they arrived, in small groups.

They are quite timid most of the time but on occasion they will land on the feeding station while it is being restocked with food and sit for 20 seconds or so watching what's happening.

They are a delight.


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