THE activity on and around my bird table is beginning to die down.
The weather is getting a little bit milder, the days are longer and the birds are devoting more of their energy to mating and nest building.
Despite this the list of species that have paid it a visit has just increased — it now stands at 15. The increase was caused by the brief appearance of a pair of long-tailed tits. These charming birds hopped around on the branch set up as a perch and examined the feeders. They seemed bemused by the activities of the coal tits, great tits and blue tits that are regular visitors and I didn’t see them eat anything. Fifteen minutes later they were gone.
I had a similar brief visit a few weeks ago.
In winter, particularly in a cold winter, many small birds that are normally quite sedentary form flocks and wander continuously around the countryside. Sometimes these flocks are of a single species and sometimes they are a mix of related species.
This winter none of the visiting flocks stayed around. They obviously have a restless urge to keep moving and not to exhaust the food supplies in a small area. But the previous winter a band of siskins stayed around for several weeks, queuing with the goldfinches to use the niger seed feeder.
I’ve noticed an interesting piece of behaviour among the goldfinches. These birds have brilliant yellow wing bars — almost the colour of a high visibility jacket. They’re also quite quarrelsome, particularly when half a dozen birds want to use a feeder that can only accommodate two at a time. And when they’re quarrelling they use these wing bars to try and intimidate one another.
What they do is open and close one or both wings very rapidly —- several times a second. This makes the yellow bar flicker and the result is very like a flashing alarm light. At first I thought this had something to do with trying to maintain balance, but now I’m convinced it’s intended as a threat.
This illustrates one of the benefits of being able to watch birds at close range on a bird table. I don’t believe I would ever have learnt about this piece of behaviour by watching goldfinches in the open countryside.
But the greatest benefit of bird tables is not to people like me, it’s to the birds. There is a paradox about goldfinches. They appear to have been declining steadily in numbers for several decades.
At the same time there is anecdotal and scientific evidence to show that the numbers visiting bird tables and seed feeders are increasing.
The probable explanation lies in the fact that goldfinches specialise in eating small seeds of wild flowers and weeds — things like thistledown and the seeds of dandelions and knapweed. These food sources have become scarcer because of changes in farming practice and building development in the countryside.
So goldfinches are abandoning the countryside and visiting seed feeders in gardens as a matter of survival. More and more people are starting to feed birds and to put up nest boxes. When my local German-owned supermarket has a special offer on bird seed and nest boxes it’s amazing how quickly it all disappears. These trends mean that people who feed wild birds, even in an urban or suburban setting, are contributing very significantly to the survival of some threatened species.
* dick.warner@examiner.ie
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, March 09, 2009
