Hawfinch Happiness

    

I normally get my yearly fix of Hawfinches in the nearby Forest of Dean at Parkend. I usually make one or two visits early in the year to the well-known site at the cricket ground where they come down to feed under Cyprus trees. Its normally best to get there early using your car as a hide then it’s a game of patience, i.e. you normally get a couple of visits spaced over a couple of hours stay. This year I went once in January and didn’t see any at all, hopefully because I was just plain unlucky.

I would say that we are at that time of year that birders call the summer doldrums, a calm period post spring and prior to migration getting going again in the autumn. Calling this summer as such would seem a total misjustice with the first Western Reef Heron and the second and third Long-tailed Shrikes already ticked off but in terms of other doable birding for me it’s been quite slow. The heat this year has made my normal summer distraction, gardening, very uncomfortable at times leading me to end up twiddling my thumbs somewhat. So this week I decided to pay a visit to another well-known Hawfinch spot where a small hide facilitates views of them coming down to drink at what is not much more than a large puddle. Sitings here seem to have been particularly good this year, presumably due to the lack of drinking water elsewhere in the woods.

I thought I’d stop at the ridgeway near Blewbury on the way to the Hawfinch site to see if I could connect with the young Montagu’s Harrier that has been there but, due to an unforeseen delay, I missed it by 5 minutes.

Arriving at the small hide that only comfortably seats four just after 10 am I was fortunate to find one space free and settled down to wait. While hopefully waiting to see a Hawfinch a collection of other birds kept me entertained as they came down for a drink, Chaffinches, Dunnocks, Robins and Bullfinches. Most were either this year’s hatchings moulting into something approaching adult plumage or rather scruffy adults in their post breeding moult.

While waiting for Hawfinch action, this little chap kept us very entertained scuttling away in front of the hide. I believe it is a Bank Vole but I would not stake my life on it.

After an hour or so a female Hawfinch dropped from the trees and spent a few minutes drinking. While perhaps lacking a little of the razzle-dazzle of male birds, the females are attractive in their own way in a subtle collections of browns and greys. The most obvious feature of the Hawfinch, and I can still remember being taken aback by this when I first saw one, is their disproportionally large powerful mandibles which have evolved to allow them to crack the toughest of nuts.

It is Britain’s largest finch and is most closely related to the european Grossbeaks. It has a huge triangular bill powered by exceptionally strong jaw muscles allowing it to open seeds that no other UK finch would contemplate including cherries. It is said that its bill can generate a load of upwards of 50 kg to achieve this! Fittingly for our largest finch, its Latin name is a real mouthful, Coccothraustes coccothraustes.

The story of Hawfinches in the UK is, to my mind at least, a fascinating one. It is what is known as an eruptive species meaning that it occasionally erupts from its traditional breeding grounds to invade on mass countries much further away. This is thought to be driven by a combination of breeding success and local crop failure resulting in not enough food to go around. 

Records indicate that the Hawfinch was a very rare winter visitor to the UK up to the 18^th century. It would then seem that an eruptive event in the 1830’s resulted in a small breeding colony being established in Epping forest. This seed colony was clearly very successful as the Hawfinch subsequently spread across the UK’s forests such that by 1960 they had reached as far north as central Scotland. Sadly, along with so many other birds, there numbers have since steadily declined. In the autumn of 2017 another eruption event occurred with many hundreds of birds being found across the UK in unusual locations. There was hope that some would stay to bolster our native birds but, as far as I’m aware, there is no evidence that this happened, so the vast majority presumably returned to continental Europe in the Spring of 2018.

Over the course of perhaps three hours the same or a very similar female Hawfinch made three visits to drink in front of the hide but there was no sign of a male. for comparison, here is one from a previous visit to the Forest of  Dean.

After lunch I made my way home happy to have finally year ticked Hawfinch.

Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!