Another Life: Goldfinches in the city

Goldfinches are my birds of paradise – or as near, now, as I am ever likely to get. A little flock of these glorious birds has been commuting between the peanut feeders on the oak tree and the seeds, in dark cones, of an alder, just a few metres away. On the peanuts they sometimes fight and hiss at each other, but the alder lets them each have a whole twig, where they sway in the wind and swing upside down to peck – exotic acrobats. Perhaps we shouldn’t be spoiling them for choice.

It's some years since autumn flocks of rural finches, finishing the thistle heads of the countryside, began following each other to the largesse of garden feeders. When BirdWatch Ireland began its annual surveys of winter garden birds, almost 20 years ago, Carduelis carduelis spent the first five seasons well down the list of the most common species. It soon began a rapid climb – to ninth place. This winter's survey, just begun, might find them in even higher abundance after robins, blackbirds, tits and the rest. (Go to birdwatchireland.ie to join in.)

As winter cools, enormous numbers of goldfinches migrate from northern Europe to the lingering seed heads of the Mediterranean. In Spain and Portugal they can then become the commonest bird. This may now be changing, at least in our milder winters, as garden-bird foods support a near-industrial trade.

We buy peanuts in a hessian sack from the farmers’ co-op. It comes from Argentina, where more than 200,000 hectares nurture groundnuts, mostly for human foods. The growers have just had another poor crop, because of drought. But Argentina now leads the field in exports, China having turned almost all its huge production to the home demand for cooking oil. Argentina assures the EU of its superior care in keeping its nuts free of aflatoxin, the fungus that can damage human livers, as well as those of birds.

Peanuts, of course, are just the staple garden takeaway. Gourmet food for finches is black, shiny and oil-rich niger seeds, dispensed from special feeders. BirdWatch Ireland’s shop offers “Nyjer Nibbles” at €35 for 12.5kg (the alternative “nyjer”, some suggest, having been adopted commercially for fear of upsetting the market in racially sensitive countries where people can’t spell).

Niger, nyger, nyjer or even ramtilla, the seeds are prolifically those of Guizotia abyssinica, a tall and branching plant with small, aster-like yellow flowers that originated in the Ethiopian Highlands. It is now widely grown in Africa and Asia for its excellent edible oil. Much of the surplus exported for birdseed is heat-sterilised against invasive alien weeds – also the growth of niger scattered by finches on suburban lawns.

Seeing goldfinches in city gardens is a modern pleasure. As the Dublin ornithologist John Watters described 150 years ago: "We seldom observe the goldfinch unless in the cages of the 'fancy', and though occasionally we meet with it in a wild state in the county of Dublin, it is always rare, and only increases in numbers as we approach Meath . . ." The cause, he explained, was "the continual forays of the bird-catchers", the typical domestic captive "being secured by a chain and a link fastened on the breast, and its only enjoyment the complacent admiration of itself in the looking-glass attached to the back of the cage."

By 1900, as Richard Ussher and Robert Warren reported, bird-catchers had extinguished goldfinches "for miles around our larger towns, and even in many country districts the species has sensibly diminished." By the 1950s the birds were on the increase and extending their range again, largely due to the passage of the first Wild Birds Protection Act, in 1931. This prohibited trapping and use of the treacle-like birdlime. One objector to the Act was the TD for Dublin South, Sean Lemass, speaking up for the livelihoods of about 300 people catching birds for export to Britain. "If the economic situation becomes better," he said, "we can then afford to indulge in luxury legislation of this kind."

But trapping of songbirds still goes on. Birdlime has given way to an ultra-sticky rodent glue, decoy birds tethered to cages, and clap nets. Demand for finches comes from some caged-bird hobbyists who seek to cross them with captive-bred birds, and a ready market in the UK for finches selling at up to £40 each has been reported by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Ireland’s first wildlife-crime conference, held in Ashbourne, Co Meath, in September, listed trapping of finches for Britain alongside deer poaching, badger baiting and the poisoning of eagles. Animal welfare NGOs help the Garda and National Parks and Wildlife Service in periodic seizures and prosecutions.

It is now an issue of criminality and cruelty rather than conservation of species, and feeding our garden goldfinches should easily keep numbers up.