Attract Finches to your garden

Wild bird food for Goldfinch, Bullfinch and Greenfinch.

We all love to see the beautiful colours of the Finches in our gardens, but often it is a case of what you offer as bird food to the Finches that makes them stay or leave your wild bird feeding station. Niger seed is famous as the "Goldfinch magnet" and truly does enjoy great favour with the Finches, a tiny thistle seed, usually from the African continent it does require a special Niger seed feeder with small feeding apertures to avoid the seed spilling out, it is a good idea to add a tray to your bird feeder base to catch both the spilled seed and the empty husks, as once you get a few Finches feeding they do get through a lot of seed and it does germinate at this time of year to make a carpet of green shoots under the bird feeding station. All of the Finches will feed on Niger seed, we regularly get Goldfinch and Greenfinch on the Niger seed, but the Bullfinch prefers something else (in our garden - and all gardens are different when it comes to wild bird feeding habits). One thing it is worth mentioning, is that the Goldfinch tend to come and go in about five week cycles, they appear, and stay with us for four or five weeks, then for no apparent reason they leave us for the same period, I know not why this is and it could just be our garden, but it is always reassuring to see the Goldfinches coming back for more. The Bullfinch are pretty rare in our garden, indeed for about five years we never saw one, so we had a go at a different mix of wild bird food to attract Bullfinches. British Bird Food exclusive Finch Food, is a blend of mainly Niger seed but also some other finch food seeds are added. Now if may be a coincidence, but the year we put out the Finch Food in our wild bird feeders, we got a breeding pair of Bullfinches in all their breeding plumage - a magnificent sight. That was three years ago and we have had sightings of feeding Bullfinches every year since, always on the finch food feeders. [caption id="attachment_3702" align="alignleft" width="150"] As an alternative to straight Niger seed, try our own mix of Finch Food to attract Bullfinches to your garden bird feeders.[/caption]