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From The Times
September 23, 2005

Nature notes

GREENFINCHES are finding life easy at the moment, flying around the countryside in flocks to find the best of the abundant food now available. They tear the lantern-like seeds off the hornbeam trees, and go down to the ground to peck at dandelion clocks and groundsel and pick up the hooked seeds that are starting to fall from the burdock plants. They like blackberries and the orange hips that are now steadily ripening on the wild rose bushes, but they are more inclined to leave the hips until winter, when food will get scarcer.

They also go into yew trees for the pink berries. Other birds such as blackbirds eat the juicy flesh of these berries, and let the poisonous seed inside pass through their bodies. However, greenfinches can strip off the outer skin of the seeds, where the poison is concentrated, and eat the nutritious centre. Greenfinches come enthusiastically to peanut feeders in a garden, and there one can get good views both of the handsome male with his olive-green plumage and lemon- yellow wingbars, and the duller green female

DJM

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