Diet

Lent is upon us, and I've decided to cut out two of the things I really love to eat - cake and chocolate. This time I mean it . . . so none of the weaselling out seen in past years, such as giving up cake but excluding scones and flapjacks from the definition of cake, or giving up chocolate but still consuming it when used to coat a digestive biscuit. Well, it's been a week so far, and the resolve is holding, and the money saved will go to a good cause, as yet to be decided.

Watching our garden birds, it's clear that different foods suit different species - well, we knew that, of course - but also that different birds of the same species seem to have their own likes and dislikes (just like us, in other words). Among the most delightful of the visitors to our feeders is a pair of bullfinches; the male is by some distance the most showy of our regular visitors, with his bold black cap and deep rose breast, but the female is also attractive, with her more restrained breast plumage of salmon-grey. They almost always appear together, and the male often stands guard until the somewhat shyer female has taken her place at the feeders. Their taste in food is quite different. The male is generally at the sunflower seed feeder, with occasional forays to the nyger seed; the female, on the other hand, always goes to the fat-ball feeder (almost the only finch of any species to do this), where we have small fat pieces with seeds and insect parts added to the mix.

I wonder a little at the comparatively unusual food preference of the female. It may be that she is gaining particular nutrition from this food that will improve her breeding ability, or of course it may be that, as a rather shy bird (unlike the male, who can be something of a bully-boy), she prefers to keep away from the squabbles that are constantly breaking out at the seed feeders. Or of course, it may simply be that she just likes the fat balls more!