I worry about my garden birds. I quietly apologise to them if I am late filling the feeders in the mornings. Where have the Greenfinches and Chaffinches been since the Spring? There was a rare day recently when I saw not a single Great Tit but happily they are all now back. I had just this morning read a newspaper article asking the same question about finches but then suddenly in front of me, there he was. It made my heart sing.
I wonder if this little beauty, a Eurasian or Common Chaffinch, Fringilla coelebs, has been in the UK all along or is part of the regular influx from North and Northeast Europe at this time of year. The common name derives from Old English, ceaf and finc, chaff finch, given for the time they spend searching for grain amongst the chaff after crops have been threshed. They have many folk names too, amongst them spink and sheld-appel. Fringillae, one of two sub-families, comprise four species, the Gran Canaria and Tenerife Blue Chaffinches and the Brambling. There are various subspecies, controversial to varying degrees.
The birds were popular as caged songbirds until keeping them was outlawed in Great Britain at least by the Wild Birds Protection Acts of the late nineteenth century. Often they would be blinded by hot needles to make them sing more. I have often wondered whether Maya Angelou was aware of this when she chose the title for the first part of her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Birds Sings. She meant something different I think, but I can only ever think of this. Here is Thomas Hardy’s poem, “The Blinded Bird”:
So zestfully canst thou sing?
And all this indignity,
With God’s consent, on thee!
Blinded ere yet a-wing
By the red-hot needle thou,
I stand and wonder how
So zestfully thou canst sing!
Resenting not such wrong,
Thy grievous pain forgot,
Eternal dark thy lot,
Groping thy whole life long;
After that stab of fire;
Enjailed in pitiless wire;
Resenting not such wrong!
Who hath charity? This bird.
Who suffereth long and is kind,
Is not provoked, though blind
And alive ensepulchred?
Who hopeth, endureth all things?
Who thinketh no evil, but sings?
Who is divine? This bird.
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