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Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris)

The Greenfinch is familiar throughout Europe as a large, thick-billed, boisterous and slightly bullying finch, its aggressive tendencies seemingly embodied in the slight but permanent frown of its dark eyebrow. Of all the finches that specialise on seeds, this one probably takes the greatest variety, using its heavy bill to break open all but the hardest-shelled. It evidently has several niches to itself: few other finches take seeds from the heads of sunflowers, rose seeds from hips, or fruit from blackberries. Greenfinches can even cope with yew berries, which are highly poisonous; they remove the seed-coat, the dangerous part, by mandibulation. This flexibility allows the Greenfinch to live in a wide range of habitats, including woodland edge, gardens, cemeteries, scrub and farmland. In one study in a cultivated area with plenty of hedges, Greenfinches were found to utilise the seeds of every one of the 30 commonest plants of the area.

Greenfinches are at their most obvious in the spring, when the males utter their canary-like trilling songs from the tops of trees and bushes; the usual run of phrases is regularly interrupted by an emphatic wheezing note, sounding a bit like the word “Green”. Every so often the males break off from perch-bound singing to launch into a song-flight, in which they flutter at about tree-top height with heavy wing-beats, pitching to and fro and often describing circles or figures of eight.

Recent studies have shown that the Greenfinch’s pairing system is quite complicated. Although monogamy could be considered the rule, about a quarter of males in a population may be polygynous, with two or even three mates each. This leaves some males unpaired, and it is not uncommon for them to display to attached females, and even help with feeding the young. Later on, quite a high proportion of such helpers pair up and breed with the female concerned when they opportunity arises, as if being rewarded for their efforts.