Bullfinches – A Welcome Spring Surprise

Historical Impact of the Bullfinch and Its Role in Our Garden

I was watching a bullfinch hopping around the garden this morning. A welcome distraction from my exercise bike torture, it was cheerfully moving around the unmown grass and occasionally checking out the peach and pear trees

I’ve always liked them, but I was reminded how their obvious characteristics—striking plumage and fondness for fruit blossoms—have often been their downfall.

The Victorians trapped and kept them in cages, where they would attempt to teach the poor little prisoners to whistle songs; they were talented mimics. But this was small beer compared to the commercial fruit growers who trapped and killed them in their hundreds. The impact of bullfinches on fruit crops is unclear – they undoubtedly take the early buds. Still, commercial fruit trees can lose up to 50% of their buds without the overall harvest being affected (source Birds Britannica by Mark Cocker and Richard Maybey).

This seems intuitively correct as fruit trees have evolved side by side with bullfinches, and all gardeners are familiar with the phenomenon of the June drop, which occurs when the tree ditches a percentage of its crop to give the remaining fruit a better chance of success. Certainly, our experience has shown that frost is the single most significant factor in determining the crop success of our peaches, pears, cherries, apples, blueberries, and currants.

Birds Britannica cites an example of a Herefordshire garden culling 200 bullfinches a year, yet in the end, the bullfinch population in the surrounding countryside was virtually identical. All that effort, suffering, and tragedy for nothing. It reminds me of the cursed badger cull in the UK—the crime is unproven, and the punishment ineffective.

Some years we notice more finches in the garden than others. This may be because their winter diet has been shown to be largely ash keys – so perhaps ash die back (Chalara) is having an impact here? Our ash trees seem far more chalara resistant than the ones we remember from the UK, but they have bad years and better years, perhaps forcing the bullfinches onto the fruit in the lean years.

Either way my heart was lifted by the sight of this chunky, jolly bird strutting around in our tangled lawn. They will always have a place of safety at Le Moulin while we are here. Maybe I could get them to learn to simple tunes with my penny whistle?