This series involves an area that we love with beautiful paths and walks in the Hampshire countryside along with our love of birds. Each cache has information relating to a different bird, many of which will be present along the trail. The First Time Finder is a key fob featuring each particular bird apart from the micro caches which are all creatures that sustain our bird life. The information is provided by the wonderful book 'Tweet of the Day' by Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss. We hope that the walks and information encourage others to learn about the wonderfully diverse bird life that we enjoy.
Goldfinch:
The tinkling of a group of goldfinches as they tease out tiny seeds from hanks of thistledown is one of the most evocative sounds made by any songbird; small wonder that a goldfinch flock is often called a ‘charm’. Happily, it’s a sound you are far more likely to hear today than a generation or more ago. The song of the goldfinch is a fluid series of high-pitched whistles, twitters and tweets, with a delicate quality, like the music of ice on winter ponds, and is audible even above the drone of city traffic. The birds are equally attractive visually, with their bright yellow wing flashes and faces feathered in black, white and red. The crimson circlet around the bill is said to be because a goldfinch took pity on the crucified Christ, and pulled the thorns from his crown. Goldfinches are also sometimes known as ‘King Harry redcaps’, a reference to the flamboyantly dressed monarch Henry VIII. However the goldfinch’s combination of physical and aural appeal almost led to its downfall. In Victorian times it was much in demand as a cagebird. The finches were caught by the thousand using nets, twigs coated with a sticky birdlime concocted from mistletoe berries, and ‘chardonneret traps’ – named after the French word for goldfinch. As a result of this wholesale trapping, by the 1890s the goldfinch had become an endangered species. Fortunately the newly formed Society for the Protection of Birds (later to become the RSPB) made the recovery of the goldfinch one of its main priorities, and at the eleventh hour the bird was saved. For most of the twentieth century the goldfinch remained a fairly common bird; but in the past decade or two its numbers have soared – and this is mainly down to us. As more and more people feed garden birds, and offer a more varied menu, more goldfinches survive hard winters. Peanuts aren’t their bag though: they are particularly fond of the tiny black seeds known as nyger, which they prise from the feeders using their sharp, tweezer-like bills. Now the tinkling, crystalline song of the goldfinch is the soundtrack to many of our gardens and even city streets throughout the year.