Chaffinch
Alongside the woodpecker’s drum and the great tit’s bicycle pump, the bouncing ball cascade of the chaffinch is a quintessential soundtrack to early Spring.
The sound is sometimes likened to the rhythm of a bowler running in to deliver a cricket ball.
Another way to think of it: imagine the chaffinch is throwing the song down three wide steps, from its perch to the ground.
It’s as if the notes bounce a few times on each step and roll to a stop at your feet.
Chaffinches like to deliver their cheerful notes from mid-height - above the robins and dunnocks, but not as loftily as the thrushes. They will often sit out in the open, allowing a glimpse of the wonderful orangey-pink of their neck, chest and belly.
Famously there are distinctive regional variations in the song. A chaffinch in Scotland is likely to sound different to one in Sussex. The notes at the end show most variation, but the number and tone of the ‘steps’ can change too. Compare this next one to the one above.
Fortunately the overall pattern of the song retains a recognisably chaffinch-y shape, so unlike great tits and song thrushes they don’t normally pose an identification headache.
When they’re not singing, chaffinches have a sophisticated range of other calls, from a soft ‘hueet’ to a repetitive ‘chip’ to an exclamatory ‘chink!’ or ‘pink!’ - once you know that last one you are bound to notice many more chaffinches around you while out walking.
Chaffinches were much prized for their song in Victorian Britain, when they were captured in large numbers and caged for competition. Some practitioners would blind their birds with needles in an effort to concentrate the birds’ voices, a practice that Thomas Hardy decried in his poem The Blinded Bird.
Today, birds are bred in their thousands in parts of the near continent for vinkensport (‘finch sport’), a competition in which male chaffinches are rated on the number of phrases they can produce in a single hour.
There’s a new Shriek of the Week every Friday. If you have a friend who might like a regular dose of birdsong in their inbox, please pass this along.
And if you’d like to join me and others for a free early morning listen to the birds via Zoom, get a ticket for Up With the Birds. Our next session in Saturday 27 March.
Media credits:
Thanks to the British Library for their recordings.
Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash