Nature to look out for in Burwell

Like chaffinches, greenfinches are nesting now, holding onto their territories with a mix of calls and song, the most distinctive of which sounds like the drawn out squeak of an unoiled wheelbarrow wheel. I know as, until recently, each time I set off for the allotment with the wheelbarrow loaded with tools, I would be accompanied by a teeth jarring extended squeal and remember that once again I had forgotten to oil the wheel. Yesterday, I eventually got out the WD40 and a job of seconds was done!

I regularly hear this squeak, or wheeze as I walk round the Castle Mound; greenfinches love the thick hedges adjacent to the fields. While it sounds quiet on the recording above, the sound is really quite loud and distinctive. Greenfinches can also make a sound like a quiet version of a pneumatic drill: a rapid thud, thud, thud. This recording of a bird in Spain combines the wheeze and the thud. While any equivalences of sound require a bit of imagination, I find they help a lot when learning to pick out new bird songs.

I don’t often see the greenfinches themselves, but I am glad to know they are there. Do they come to your bird feeder? Occasionally they come to ours. Look out for their greenish bodies, and yellow wing edges. As with the chaffinch, the females are drabber – more brown than green, with a thinner yellow wing edge. Like the chaffinch they have a thickset bill, designed for cracking seeds.

Greenfinches have had a hard time since 2005, when birds started to be badly affected by the disease trichomonosis, causing a massive drop in their numbers. In winter 2005, greenfinches were seen in three-quarters of gardens, in 2011, in only half of gardens. There has been concern that this disease is passed between birds at bird feeders, so there has been increased reporting of the importance of keeping feeders clean. A message we have become unfortunately familiar with ourselves lately… Their numbers are now on the up, perhaps because of a growth in resistance to the disease combined with increased cleaning of feeders. That is so why I am so glad to hear their unoiled wheelbarrow like squeak when I am out and about…

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