When I take my lunch break at work I sometimes pull up the car at the edge of some waste ground in between a busy trunk rd, a housing estate and some industrial units an scoff my sandwiches whilst watching the world around me. It's a beautiful slice of wilderness slap bang in the middle of the stark contrast and bland uniformity of the constructed environment encircling it. There are people walking past usually on there way to work or into town but they don't seem to ever look up to see what is around them, more fool them !
On this occasion I was talking to my wife on the phone when I happened to look up to see a pair of goldfinches feeding right in front of me. I love to see gold finches as we don't get many varieties of birds in our garden except the standard house sparrow, blackbird and woodpidgeon etc. So it's always special to see some of our more colourful and rarer species.
When I looked up again I definitely wasn't expecting to see what was in front of me this time. No more than 10 feet from my windscreen were a pair of bullfinches, male and female, happily feeding on the wild flowers that were growing at the edge of the "waste ground". I don't know what the yellow flowers were I'm afraid as I'm not too clued up on British wild flowers. Anyway I sat there slack jawed in disbelief as these beautiful birds busied themselves feeding on the white wispy seed husk of the flowers, chewing it down like candyfloss. I've only ever been lucky enough to see one bullfinch in my life before, and that was a good 30 yards away and for only a split second or two. So, here I was treated to at least 10 minutes of this pair feeding feet away from me before they'd had their fill and flew off in search of a some other early summers bounty.
With today's modern technology at our disposal 24 hours a day in the form of camera phones I was able to take a few grainy photos and some movie footage of the birds. The photos were not too good as any minimal quality the camera possesed was lost by having the zoom at full extent. The movie clip didn't come out too badly I don't think though.
( best viewed in full screen -click the little square icon thingy bottom right on the youtube tool bar )
The female bullfinch was hiding down in the vegetation but she flies away across the screen near the end of the clip, soon to be followed by the male (well the women always call the shots don't they) . It certainly made my lunchtime to see these birds so near, I doubt I'll ever be lucky enough to see them that close up again.
Next post it's back to the fishing hopefully .?.....with a couple of recent blanks endured, I'm looking forward to getting a good bend in the carbon and now the rivers are open I hope it won't be too long!
I did catch a nice little rudd about 6 oz recently from the tench lake and also a perch of about 12 oz which is a promising sign and a good reason to get the float rod out a bit more on there I think !
