I set up my bird feeder site really early this year. It turned out to be a popular move because  I’ve needed to refill the feeders every evening. All week I was wondering why the food is disappearing so fast because I knew from experience that the tits don’t eat that much… then today I found out the reason. Greenfinches – lots and lots of greenfinches. They are literally queuing up to find an open spot at the feeder and bickering with each other while waiting.

I had never before seen greenfinches so I was very excited of course. When I approached the feeder, the finches were the first ones to disappear while the tits tolerated my presence. One willow tit kept pecking at the seeds when I was less than 2 m away from it. But the greenfinches were trickier so I wasn’t sure how I was going to get the pictures, I wasn’t going after any major artwork but I just wanted to document the species. I started the easy way, which is opening my living room window and shoot from there. It’s too far, but you can recognise the species in the picture. Having gotten some shots, I decided to try a bit closer. So I hid behind a small spruce and although the birds initially scattered, they soon came back. So I got some shots a little bit closer and I was happy.

I have a new setup at the feeder and I was curious how it would work, so having documented the greenfinches I draped a camo net over myself and set up shop close to the feeder to get frame fillers of the small birds. I wasn’t sure if the camo net works and I expected that only the tits would visit the feeder while I was there, but when the greenfinches re-appeared, I knew that the camo net was fine! I was amazed. And just to make it perfect, I even got a closeup of a brambling! Totally unexpected, and totally welcome. It was a dark day so I had to use high ISO and relatively slow shutter, but I still got sharp pictures if a bit noisy. And some cropping required to fix the composition because I still can’t get it right in the camera with moving subjects.

There are still some birds at the feeder as I type this. The greenfinches are gone, but now there’s a woodpecker hacking away at the peanuts!