You little beauty!

A LITTLE love to one of our more common garden birds today. Yes it’s exciting seeing a rarity, but we can’t all do that.

We could spend weeks camping out for a glimpse of something fabulously rare and… let’s be honest, usually pretty boring looking, or we could spend time appreciating what we have right here in the garden.

Few common garden birds are prettier than the handsome male chaffinch. I mean, sure, the females are a little drab, but the males more than make up for it.

Chaffinches are one of the most common and widespread finches.

They are pretty much everywhere in the UK and the population here alone is more than 12million birds.

Worldwide it’s estimated to be more like two-thousandmillion. That’s mind boggling.

Traditionally they were birds of thick woodland, but they are incredibly adaptable. They moved into farmland to feed on chaff, hence the name, then happily moved into city parks and gardens. Their need for trees still remains, with a preference for oak, but they are happy with anything dense enough.

During the winter the males tend to stay near their breeding place while the females migrate further south, leading to all male flocks. This was noted by the Swedish naturalist who named them, and their Latin name means “bachelor finch”.

Right now, though, they are breeding. Now until mid-June is peak breeding season, so males will be belting out loud songs to attract the ladies. They have regional accents and sound slightly different all over the UK. They lay four or five eggs in a cup or bowl-shaped nest. These eggs hatch after about two weeks, with the chicks ready to fly after a further two weeks. Strangely, this finch is considered one of our longest lived. On paper most small birds only survive a few years, with rare individuals making it into their early teens, but it seems more chaffinches live longer than other species. Three years seems to be their low average, with up to eight being fairly routine. In comparison most robins don’t make it to 18 months. This summer, listen for their noisy song and look on the ground under feeders and hedges. Keep an eye out for the white “bars” on their wings and white tail edges when flying to tell them apart.