Greenfinches Return to Garden

[christina]

Hello

After an absence of greenfinches in the garden this summer, they returned today much to my delight. I took these photos and it looks to me like one has a tick on under it's eye and the other appears to have blood around its mouth (could it be blackberry or rasperry juice?), is it possible that it is that disease Trich....(cannot remember the rest of the word). Since we heard about this disease we have been cleaning our feeders once a week or more to ensure there is no, or little, chance of anything spreading.





Thank you
Christina

[Dogghound]

Yes it is a tick under the eye, these are very comon on birds and are not usually a problem. It doesnt look like these birds have Trichomonosis. The red on the beak is as you say where it has been feeding on berries.

[christina]

Thank you Dogghound for putting my mind at rest regarding both the tick and the trichomonosis.

[actionfinch]

so lucky you i cant wait to see finches in my garden....

[christina]

Originally Posted by actionfinch

so lucky you i cant wait to see finches in my garden....

We are treble lucky, because the goldfinches have returned, the nuthatch is stashing his food, a new visitor arrived yesterday, we believe it's a chiffchaff and the day before a willow warbler paid a visitor for a bath, the latter two came in with a flock of longtails and accompanying tits, ie blue, coal and great..tee hee Fan-bloomin-tastic!

[Snuckie]

It's a cold wet windy miserable day today. As I looked out the kitchen window this morning to count the wind blown birds I was delighted to see 2 goldfinches. They have been absent for some time but hopefully this is them coming back. Time to get the big feeder out again as they seem to prefer it to the little ones.

[mrbright]

i saw my first ever greenfinch in my garden yesterday, due to the location of a lot of above posts, i think we must have a fairly good spreading of healthy greenfinches.

[christina]

Hi Mrbright, Unfortunately, there is a new disease hitting our greenfinches and we are in danger of losing a lot of them.

[mrbright]

hi christina, i am thinking extremely optimistically, the fact that i spotted my first ever garden greenfinch yesterday (healthy looking) i can only take this as a positive sign.

as long as we can all clean our feeders regularly, i feel there is still hope.
lets hope our birds can buck the trend.

[christina]

Hi Mrbright, cleaning feeders is happening more and more in this garden, just don't want any infections here. Let's hope that the greenfinches do buck the trend as you say and their little bodies can fight this nasty nasty I read somewhere that it appears to have been passed from another bird (may be pigeon but not sure which pigeon whether feral or wood).