The light of the moth trap has been overwhelmed by the glare of publicity for my birthday yesterday, which has had the right, satisfactory effect in terms of greetings, presents, balloons etc. So today is Martin's Birds, not Moths. Or in particular, one of my birds.
It's a goldfinch, a tribe which is numerous round here and encouraged to be more so by tiny thistle seeds in a special holder which nearly everyone includes in their range of feeders for garden birds. The finches are lovely creatures with their military shoulder stripes of gold plus flashes of bright red and black-and-white bits. Altogether a cheerful sight.
This one was strikingly unfrightened when Penny discovered it, pottering round the lawn in a rather dazed way which suggested that it might have flown into one of our windows, fortunately not too fast. This is the season for that sad phenomenon which is also extremely irritating in the case of a more than usually stupid blackbird - and that's saying something - which keeps attacking its reflection and leaving a greasy mess. Birds' wings are startlingly greasy, presumably to shrug off the rain.
The finch may also have been pregnant as I suspect last week's equally dopey slowworm was. It's that time of year. It won a further place in my affections by having a vigorous peck at a dandelion clock. Perhaps we could train a squadron of them to keep down these appealing but amazingly aggressive flowers.
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