As per my previous post, I have been fortunate to have up to four bullfinches regularly visiting the garden feeders recently, since 7 February in fact, although I saw them in the adjacent park as early as 04 January 2013. I had several sightings of a pair last year and fairly sure they bred locally.
There may be a third posting on the same subject. The bullfinch don't really hang around to study, coming to the feeders and disappearing once they have had enough or been disturbed for whatever reason and it doesn't tale a great deal. There have been up to four bullfinch, two pairs, two males, two females. I had seen threes and fours in the park and was convinced the garden visitors were probably the same birds but different birds at different times and it was not until all four have appeared at the same time, my thoughts were confirmed that they were four birds.
One male bullfinch I have christened 'Pink' as his chest colour is slightly lesser than the 'red' of the other male. The females are almost impossible to tell apart. And that really is the excuse for the post with all basically the same images. Even when the sun comes out, the north facing garden receives little direct sunlight apart from a window of opportunity between 10.30 and 11.00am. All the images were an attempt to record and separate the various birds but I confess to be struggling form the images alone – the point being under different light and weather conditions there is variation in the representation of the birds. If anyone has any suggestions or spots some identification feature I have missed I would be pleased to hear from you.
Occasionally one male or female will drop in without the other (although I think they are not far away and I haven't seen them) but more often than not, they attend as a pair male and female together. The female appears to be the dominant bird, often seeing off the male if he attempts to feed at the same feeder as herself (so there are two feeders for them). Although on occasion recently I have seen them feeding together. They are feeding on black sunflower seeds. I think I mentioned I had bullfinch in the garden a few years ago and have changed the feeders since and only recently added these two new ones which appear to have brought them in to the garden again.
Both bullfinch will see off Robins, House Sparrows and Great Tits (and the other tits) while preferring not to argue with Starling, Blackbirds and the like.As there may be another post on them I'll leave it at that for now, again the images are in no particular order or relevance except perhaps chronological, some worse or better than others, showing the variation in appearance according to the light.
I have both a flowering cherry tree and an apple tree in the garden... so I may be sacrificing my crop this year!
The blackbird in case anyone wondered if they were a member of the Thrush family and the Goosander from my local watercourse.
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