A dandelion clock in my garden…
The other evening, around 6.30, I looked out of my window towards my neighbour’s garden and was surprised by a small spot of red. You know how it is, you notice the smallest thing if it is brightly coloured – and especially if it is moving.
My heart beat faster – wow, it was a goldfinch! That’s Carduelis carduelis in Latin. I never see those in our garden, next to a wooded park. I have only ever seen them in open, rough countryside, usually where there are thistles and teasels, as they love the seeds.
We often have chaffinches. Then we have greenfinches when there are tiny seeds on the Cotinus and once a year we see a bullfinch. But not a goldfinch, despite my once putting out nyjer seeds, which were ignored.
I hastily reached for my camera…
The goldfinch on my neighbour’s decking…
I took quite a few pictures, none of which are very good, as the bird was a long way away and it was overcast. But here they are…
The dandelions were the attraction for the goldfinch…
The goldfinch with a seed in its beak…
As well as the red head, the goldfinch has a bright flash of yellow on its wings…
For more information, here is the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds page about goldfinches, here’s the British Trust for Ornithology page for more detailed statistics and here’s the Wikipedia page.
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As my pictures aren’t very good, here is a proper photograph of a goldfinch from Wikimedia Commons, by Marek Szczepanek – click on the picture to go to the source…
For the record, the dandelion’s Latin name is Taraxacum officinale and as a child I knew it as “wet the bed” (the French call it pissenlit). That’s because it has long been used as a diuretic.
This weed is among the worst to dig out of your grassy lawn as it has a long tap root, but the goldfinch has now given me a good reason to let the dandelions grow…
Another dandelion clock in the dappled sunlight of my wooded garden…
Really nice post and good pics, I shall tweet it tomorrow. Your neighbours may not appreciate the dandelion seeds though.
I think I need to point out those ARE my neighbour’s dadelion seeds that the goldfinch is eating! We tend to keep our dandelions under control…
We had a migrant visiting carefully eating each dandelion seed while the early butterflies and bees visited the others…I don’t dig them up anymore… This bird is so colorful and cute…Michelle
Thank you for stopping by to comment 🙂
Lovely post, I love dandelion flowers and clocks.
I will be watching for birds sneaking them now…
thank you kindly
Thank you for your generous words – and I hope you soon see some surprise visitors of the bird kind 🙂
I’m a dandelion fan. Indeed, have dandelion photos ready for Loose and Leafy post this weekend. http://goo.gl/nQDPl Saw goldfinches in tree outside my window for first time this year. And on track nearby. Completely taken aback. (Had to look them up!) The post is a coincidence but I’m wondering if you are seeing goldfinches and so am I – maybe it indicates they are on the increase?
Have just noticed that Twitter is influencing the way I write comments. Seem to be growing staccato!
Lucy, I have just posted a comment over on your blog – appalled at the loss of the pictures from your camera!
It’s so poignant now seeing this comment written before your blogging world fell apart 😦
But in answer to your comment, I wonder if goldfinches are increasing or if they are struggling out on the farmland and coming into city gardens more to make up for it?
I do hope you will carry on Tweeting some of your thoughts until the time comes when you have enough material (and the heart) to pick up your blog again.
Best wishes 🙂
Thanks for your thoughts about this. Without one’s companion camera, the world is much less! About backing up – I’m quite good at backing up but, in this case . . . I had an empty card, took pictures in the morning, came home, took some pictures of the cat (!) went back out to continue – and that’s when it happened. The gap between the cat picture and finding everything had gone was about three minutes! In the normal way of things, I am not as assiduous as you as I go along so I expect you would have backed them up during the mid-day return home. That was what I used to do too but I got in a muddle with part cards so I back up in triplicate (one temporary hard drive, two permanent ones) at the end of a card. The battery over-heating now stops long sessions and I’m struggling to get the settings back to how they were but I’m hoping to continue with Loose and Leafy even though I’ll take a break from Message in a Milk Bottle. The rain really is having an impact. I generally have some spares for using during bad weather but , when the latest ones vanished, I had already used the spares! And, having got condensation in a previous camera I’m very wary of taking this one out even in drizzle.
The break means I can catch up with all sorts of things which have accumulated over the last few months – boring things like putting paid gas bills in files . . . letters . . .
Lucy
Cute little bird..we get a bird that is extremely tiny and nests every year in a small basket on a wall, but your goldfinch is awesome..by the way Dandelion leaves are great in salads/or cook like spinach..loaded with iron and very healthy..you can also cook up with bacon…we don’t get them here where we live..it’s too tropical..but you can buy them..if you can imagine that…
love the article..thanks for sharing…Happy Mother’s Day..
Although I know you can eat dandelion leaves, it just doesn’t seem right to me, as when I was a child we used to pick the flowers and dab the white milky juice from the stems on the back of our hands, as it painted little round circles. It looked so poisonous!
And no, I can’t believe that you can buy dandelion leaves!
Best wishes 🙂
You mean you’ve never drank dandelion tea ? very healthy and an herbal supplement….I have to buy the leaves as they don’t grow here, but thistles do and that is also an herbal tea…love your articles..thanks for sharing ..
“Dandelion clock.” What a delightful term — had not seen that before. And your bird photos are lovely — all surrounded by dandelions.
Thank you for your kind comment.
I’ve always called it a clock and I think it’s because when I was a child we would blow on the seed head and the number of puffs it took to blow all the seeds off was supposed to tell the time. Not very accurate, I think!
Best wishes 🙂
Hi – found your blog from Loose and Leafy – not to brag or anything but we have goldfinches on our bird table all the time – they seem to have taken over from sparrows. As for them eating dandelion seeds – it never occurred to me – a good excuse for not weeding.
Excellent! OK,I guess I am jealous…
But despite that, I have signed up for your blog alerts – love it!