| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Tavascarow |
Fess up, who's taken my goldfinches?2007 & 2008 where great years for goldfinches here.Seemed like every time I walked the fields there would be a charm feeding on thistles or calling their sweet diminuative songs from a bush. This year they seem to have disapeared, just the odd one. I'm thinking the cold snap we had in February has dented their population considerably. So what are they like where you are? For those that don't know what a goldfinch looks like. Link |
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| Ian33568 |
We've nicked 'em....none last year but many feasting on sunflower heads this year....they are lovely birds. 
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| GSHP |
We've had the few around all year, they nest close by and they have just started to come back onto the feeders but as you say I've yet to see a flock feeding in the fields. We have had the odd flock of mixed finches passing through but nothing more. | ||
| ksia |
I've usually seen 'em nearby, but not this year. | ||
| mochyn |
Charms here not as great as usual, I think, but no dramatic reduction. I'd miss them if they weren't here! We leave a lot of seeding plants standing for them and they're well appreciated. | ||
| dpack |
squizzers ?
magpies? puss? |
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| Colin & Jan |
Lots here in East Kent. There have been thousands passing through over the last few weeks. A stretch of set-a-side up the road has a goodly number on what is left of the thistle heads.
Woodcock are also starting to appear; spaniels put up two at the weekend. Colin |
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| Marionb |
Come to think of it, I havent seen any for ages now. | ||
| bodger |
We have a dozen a day at any one time most days. I'm just waiting for last years siskins to show up now. | ||
| wellington womble |
Might have been me. We've loads for the first time, fighting over the birdfeeders and generally making a lot of noise for such little birds. Pretty though - they can share my garden anytime. | ||
| BethinPA |
We had great, yellow, noisy clouds of them munching on the echinacea in town. I'm planting echinacea next year to attract them!
Beth (surely, though, they weren't here in the US from the UK) |
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| Millymollymandy |
I know I'm in Brittany and you're probably talking about the UK but I don't think I've even seen one this year. 
There's a weed in my lawn (hawkbit?) which has yellow flowers on long stalks which turn into fluffy seed pods and one year we had a whole host (OK, charm) of green and gold finches plus loads of baby goldfinches which came for several weeks and demolished the seeds. My ex moorhens used to love eating the seed pods too. (ex as in they went off to pastures new, not that I divorced them  )
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| Millymollymandy |
Dur, not you are not all in the UK!
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| bodger |
Saw a flock of over thirty yesterday on some rough ground about 4 miles away from our house.
Have people noticed what a large variation in colour there is between gold finches ? If you want goldies in your garden you've got to keep niger seed on offer all year round. In the part of Staffordshire that I came from and in other parts of the country they are known as red linnets. |
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| lottie |
We've got plenty--'cept I keep calling them gold crests 
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| Tavascarow |
Nope your goldfinches are a different species to the European goldfinch. European Goldfinch American Goldfinch |
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| bodger |
I've seen the American goldfinch at my friends house in NYS and they are not even similar.
Its the American Robins that amaze me, they are way bigger than our black birds. |
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| Jamanda |
Not many finches here, but I did just see a proper big, Hitchcockian flock of starlings swooping and chattering before going to roost. | ||
| bodger |
There seem to be a few more starling about here this year but nothing like the hundreds of thousands of ten to fifteen years back. | ||
| lottie |
We had a huge flock wheeling over the field next to us last evening-but when we moved to Bolton 20 years ago the garden was covered in them when I threw scraps out---by the time we left I never saw one. |