The “Aha” moment of the day and a blessed one at that. A pair of goldfinches visiting the garden feeder. They are a rare sight here at the Dalamory Homestead. Where I used to live on the island of Seil, there were loads of them. I guess they don’t like it as much up here in the hills as by the sea.
About
The life and thoughts of Freda Marshall, a retired Church of Scotland minister living amongst the mountains and glens of Argyll.Pages
Our kitchen window bird feeders are full of goldfinches this spring and I’m loving them so. We haven’t attracted them to our yard in ten years and I don’t know what has brought them now. I’ve always fed a specialty feed concoction called “Northwest Blend,” but the goldfinches tossed all the sunflower seeds onto the ground and ate only the cracked seeds. It made a huge mess and was becoming an expensive waste. So I switched to cracked sunflower seeds in one feeder and whole ones in the other. It worked. The chickadees, sparrows, rufus-sided towees, nuthatches, Oregon juncos, and house finches will eat both, but the goldfinches go only to the cracked seed feeder. No waste, no fuss.
Now I will have to look in my atlas for the island you spoke of.
You certainly have a wonderful array of birds visiting your garden, Lydia. You can get an idea of Seil from http://www.seil.oban.ws/islands.html
Thank you for the link. I think Seil looks spectacular! Did you raise your family there?
I read your post about Spring, and see a bird called blue-tits. I’ve never heard of them, but we have a flock of about 30 tiny bush-tits that visit our suet feeder daily, year-round. They are gray with black beaks and beady black eyes and make a high-pitched sound not like a normal tweet. They must be related to blue-tits. The only blue colored birds we have are blue jays. I call them “peanut boys” because they feast on peanuts we put in the gazebo feeder. They have huge personalities!
I like the idea of birds being called “peanut boys” – that suits are tiny blue-tits too. I lived on Seil from 1997-2005 where I was the parish minister. It is a beautiful place, but then it is lovely here too.