200 Goldfinches Sweep Through Priestcliffe Grasses — SkimNews
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- Mark Cocker observed a flock of about 200 goldfinches, mostly juveniles hatched that year, working through tufted hair-grass stands over a metre tall at Priestcliffe in strong autumn westerlies.
- The goldfinches fed on thistle and knapweed seed beneath the hair-grass 'canopy,' with the young birds lacking the red and black head bands of adults but showing prominent semi-circular yellow wing disks and white-tipped feathers.
- Cocker noted the flock's coordinated movement produced double bands of brightness and 'exquisite countervailing patterns of movement' as they shifted between grass stands in intermittent sunlight.
- Cocker proposed that the old name 'tailorbird' for goldfinches may derive from the birds' ecological relationship with cottony nesting materials — thistle floss, spider silk, and wool — not just their white tail- and wing-tip 'eye-holes.'
- Cocker likened the flock's tinkling, fragmented calls to 'melting flakes of gold' and dust from an exploded star some five billion years old, framing the Priestcliffe scene as part of a 'greater creative whole.'
Why it matters: Cocker offers both an ecological snapshot — roughly 200 juvenile goldfinches exploiting autumn thistle and knapweed seed beneath a metre-tall hair-grass canopy at Priestcliffe — and a revised folk etymology: that 'tailorbird' stems from the birds' use of thistle floss, spider silk, and wool as nesting fibre, not just their white tail markings.
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