Garden Birds

We call them “garden birds” but they’re “wild birds” in search of food and shelter, aren’t they?

This of course is true: garden birds are wild birds and many of them have been driven into our gardens because their natural habitat is either under threat or has been lost all together. Birds that frequent our gardens – garden birds – use the green space we’ve created as wildlife corridors, navigating their way from A to B in search of food and shelter.

To my mind, the Goldfinch has transcended from countryside dweller to garden bird and is arguably a strong candidate for the “bird to have benefitted most from garden bird feeding” award. Goldfinches are no longer a rare site in gardens and this is partly due to the way they have adapted to modern bird feeders and especially Niger seed and Sunflower Hearts.

If garden birds are wild birds looking for food and shelter, the Goldfinch is a glowing example of the positive role birders have played by providing food for them as Goldfinches are now found in almost five times as many gardens as they were sixteen years ago! (Source: BTO).

Garden birds, wild birds, birds – what’s in a name? Their beauty is what we’re preserving and the biodiversity of bird life in Britain and beyond, all for the price of a bag of garden bird food. 

Written by Simon H. King