WINTER’S WILDLIFE Return visit’s seed of hope
Woodlands are awakening to the dawn chorus. Wetlands pulsate to the vibrant songs of reed and sedge warblers.
Cuckoos are calling their names and nightingales have clocked in for the nightshift. Soon, the skies will be sliced by the rapier wings of swifts.
For all the joys of the season of arrival and awakening, one sight has filled me with hope these past weeks. A female chaffinch fossicking for spilt seed under the bird feeders marked the first visit to our garden in several years by this once abundant species.
Growing up, my first nature books trumpeted how the chaffinch vied with the blackbird for the title of Britain’s Commonest Bird. I also remember getting an early lesson in “sexual dimorphism” – the visible differences between male and female animals – by comparing the gaudy cock chaffinch in striking blues and pinks to his dowdy mate in her shades of brown.
There were plenty of chaffinches to study from my bedroom window as they visited our back yard in good numbers in winter and many would hang around to nest in nearby woods, parks and spinneys.
Turn the clock forward 50 years and chaffinches have become noticeable by their absence in town and country. Their increasing scarcity throughout suburbia is borne out by findings from the RSPB’S Big Garden Birdwatch.
This winter, chaffinches were seen in only a quarter of the gardens monitored, putting them 11th in the list of recorded birds and representing an estimated 70% downturn in sightings since the project was launched in 1979.
This mirrors the decrease in our breeding population by 15% over the past seven decades to today’s estimated 5.1 million territories.
Reasons for the demise are complex but the outbreak of trichomonosis, a disease caused by protozoan parasites and which has devastated greenfinches, must have had an impact.
That said, since the chaffinch’s appearance in our garden, my morning dog walks have rung to a soundtrack of their cascading songs. No wonder I feel chuffed.
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Chaffinches were seen in only a quarter of gardens over winter