The annual results of the
British Trust for Ornithology Garden BirdWatch survey have just been published,
revealing nearly five times as many gardens with Goldfinch, but half the number
of gardens with Song Thrush. How things have changed in 16 years!
Goldfinches
rocketed from number 20 in the garden bird 'league table' to number 10.
The recent cold
winters have resulted in numbers of Wren visiting gardens have dropped. The Song
Thrush numbers have halved, when compared with 1995.
Goldfinch
The European
Goldfinch or Goldfinch - Carduelis carduelis - breeds across
Europe, North Africa and western and central Asia.
Description
The sexes are
broadly similar, with a red face, black and white head, warm brown upperparts,
white underparts with buff flanks and breast patches, and black and yellow
wings. On closer inspection male Goldfinches can often be distinguished by a
larger, darker red mask that extends just behind the eye. In females, the red
face does not reach the eye. The ivory-coloured bill is long and pointed, and
the tail is forked.
Call
The call is a
melodic tickeLIT, and the song is a pleasant tinkling medley of trills
and twitters, but always including the trisyllabic call phrase or a teLLIT-teLLIT-teLLIT.
The song is a pleasant silvery twittering.
Food
The preferred
food is small seeds. They feed on various tree seeds, such as alder and birch,
and on thistle, teasel. Insects are also taken when feeding young in summer.
Breeding
They nest in the
outer twigs of tall leafy trees. The cup-shaped nest is built by the female.
She lays four to six pale blue eggs with reddish markings. They hatch in 11–14
days. The young are fed by both parents.
Conservation status – Least concern
The Goldfinches
have more or less recovered from a serious decline in the 1970s and 80s that
was possibly caused by increased use of herbicides, but changing agricultural
practices still threaten this bird.
Song Thrush
The Song
Thrush - Turdus philomelos - is a thrush that breeds across much of
Europe and Asia.
Description
The sexes are
similar, with plain brown backs and neatly black-spotted cream or yellow-buff
underparts, becoming paler on the belly. The underwing is warm yellow, the bill
is yellowish and the legs and feet are pink. The upperparts of this species
become colder in tone from west to east across the breeding range from Sweden to Siberia.
The juvenile resembles the adult, but has buff or orange streaks on the back
and wing coverts.
Call
It has a short,
sharp tsip call, replaced on migration by a thin high seep,
similar to the Redwing's call but shorter. The alarm call is a chook-chook
becoming shorter and more strident with increasing danger. The male's song,
given from trees, rooftops or other elevated perches, is a loud clear run of
musical phrases, repeated two to four times, filip filip filip codidio
codidio quitquiquit tittit tittit tereret tereret tereret, and interspersed
with grating notes and mimicry.
Food
They are omnivorous,
eating a wide range of invertebrates, especially earthworms and snails as well
as soft fruits.
Breeding
The female builds
a neat cup-shaped nest in a bush, tree or creeper. She lays four or five bright
glossy blue eggs which are lightly spotted. The female incubates the eggs alone
for 10–17 days, and after hatching a similar time elapses until the young
fledge. Two or three broods in a year is normal.
Conservation Status – Least concern
This bird has an
extensive range and a large population, with an estimated 40 to 71 million
individuals in Europe alone.