Bullfinches are very elusive birds. They are thought to have gone down in numbers in the woods, but I am not so sure. I often hear their soft, piping call, but I do not see them all that often. I think that they are very widely overlooked.
However, that gentle call is quite distinctive — a slightly sighing “phew”, which the male and the female members use all the time to keep in touch with each other. In fact they are very domestic birds, with the pair staying together year after year, and never going far from home. Russian and Finnish bullfinches may head south in the winter, but not our British bullies.
The pair also make tender gestures to each other all the year round. Their soft, warbling song is not often heard, but they sometimes sing to each other. The song is apparently not used — as most other birds’ songs are — to defend their territory. They do not seem to bother with that. The pair will also sometimes touch bills.
When you do see them you cannot mistake them. Not only are they very brightly coloured, but the colours are all so pure. The male has a salmon-pink breast, his cap is pure black, and his square rump is pure white. The female is the same, but her breast is a pinkish-brown — very pink in some lights. Both have jet-black wings with a thin white stripe.
Just occasionally, they will sit boldly and conspicuously on the outer twigs of a tree. I once saw a whole family in a birch — the father at the top, the mother and three youngsters (who lack the black cap) further down. They looked like a living family tree.
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Just now you can often hear a rather squeaky version of the piping note. This comes from the young, calling for food. They take about six weeks before they start calling like their parents.
They are birds that take their leisure. When a bullfinch is extracting the seeds from a ripe blackberry, it rolls the berry quite slowly round its bulbous beak before dropping the pulp.
They like the seeds of berries, but also come down to the ground for the seeds of flowers. They will pull down the seedheads of dandelions or groundsel to get at them, and will strip the stems of shepherd’s purse.
However, they have one unfortunate taste — they like the flowerbuds of fruit trees, and can eat 30 of them in a minute. They seem particularly fond of pear and plum buds, and they can devastate a tree in the winter or early spring. So sometimes they are legally shot, and no doubt sometimes illegally too.
Despite this, they are one of my favourite birds, and when I hear that soft piping I always try to see the bird that is making it. In one of his poems, Thomas Hardy imagined them addressing each other as “Brother bullies”, and I rather think of them that way.
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WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR
Birders On the longest day look out for barn owls forced to hunt before nightfall.
Twitchers Dusky warbler, Fowey, Cornwall; great white egret, Llanelli, S. Wales; paddyfield warbler, Foula, Shetland; glossy ibis, Otmoor, Oxfordshire.
Details from Birdline, 0906 8700222 (60p a min) www.birdingworld.co.uk; www.rspb.org.uk
derwent.may@thetimes.co.uk