Tim writes: 2017 has seen a massive influx of Hawfinches into Britain and some have turned up in places that they don’t usually occur, including this one near Barnsley. It was feeding on the seeds of Field Maple.
Hawfinches are Britain’s largest breeding finch, but they are also probably our most elusive. They spend lots of time high in the tree tops or moving about inconspicuously on the woodland floor. The outsized bill, plus enormous neck muscles enables Hawfinches to exploit food sources unavailable to other birds. Cherry Stones feature in its diet which it cracks with great force to reach the kernels inside. The force exerted by a Hawfinch’s bill can exceed 57 pounds per square inch. Its scientific name Coccothraustes coccothraustes translates as kernel-cracker. There are also tales of bird ringers almost losing finger tips while handling them.
The name Hawfinch was first recorded in 1674 but at that time the name Grosbeak was the more popular name. It was not until the early nineteenth century (ie 150 years later) that the name Hawfinch prevailed. Hawthorn berries do form part of their diet but they prefer Yew, Hornbeam and Field Maple to Hawthorn. Their body size looks to me to be about the same as a Starling but book measurements are deceptive as the shorter bill of Hawfinch makes it appear smaller on paper. Weights are a better comparison; Hawfinches weigh about 58g, which is more than twice as heavy as a Chaffinch, and more than three times heavier than a Goldfinch.
Unfortunately this beautiful Finch has disappeared from many of its former haunts. There are several sites near to me where I could once guarantee to see Hawfinches but they have all disappeared. Since the 1968-72 Bird Atlas the breeding range has contracted by more than 75%. To put it another way, for every 4 spots on the breeding Atlas in 1972 there is now just one. Numbers have tumbled too, in addition to a range contraction. In the 1988-91 Breeding Bird Atlas the population was estimated to be 3000-6500 pairs but currently the population is estimated as just 500-1000 pairs in the whole of Britain. To put it another way, for every six Hawfinches that were around twenty years ago, there is only one today. This is why any sighting of a Hawfinch is exciting and noteworthy.
Mark writes: I saw Tim yesterday and he said he’d send me some Hawfinch images so I thought I ought to go out and see some – which I did! There have been reports of Hawfinches in several Northants locations through this invasion, mostly churchyards with Yew trees or some of the posher villages. I headed off to one of those rather hidden villages in the Northamptonshire countryside, along a gated road, through a stretch of flooded road, across some exposed fields where the car felt the force of the wind and into a village with large houses made of the local yellow, mellow stone.
The Hawfinches were easy to see – because someone else had found them – I just pulled over where there were a few birdwatchers looking into the tops of some tall trees. There had been eight birds a little earlier and there probably still were but the most I saw at once was three. Good views though – perched and in flight – although nowhere near as good views as Tim’s photographs!
Tim and I had had our chat yesterday at Tim Cleeves’s funeral where we heard, from Adrian Pitches, that Cleeves had seen some Hawfinches in the northeast a few weeks ago. This was one of Tim’s favourite birds – one of a trio of species he called the three ‘Tubbies’. I partly went out looking for Hawfinches today because that’s what Tim Cleeves would have done.
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Are they by any chance related to Tyrannosaurus Rex?
Very distantly, yes!
Local reports of upto 120 in a local wood.
Thanks Tim for the fab images. (the bird exists in my imagination only)
Yes, nearly all my knowledge about the Hawfinch is secondhand. But the more I read about and discuss the subject, the greater the feeling that this bird has a very special relationship with the cherry trees.
Guy Mountfort, in his classic monograph on the Hawfinch, tells us that the earliest English reference for the bird is from the polymath and antiquarian naturalist, Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82), who stated that coccothraustes was ‘chiefly seen in summer time about cherrietime’. ‘Cherry time’, the phrase evokes pleasant thoughts and excites the imagination about such an extraordinary and elusive bird which, for most of us, even if it is close by, remains unheard and unseen.
And yet, a nearby neighbour, Neville Gilder, living on the Sussex Hants border, recollected that, come each July during the 1950’s, it was time to look out for and anticipate the start of a Hawfinch family’s feast up in the eighty foot Gean (Wild Cherry) in his garden. He explained that even though the cherries were not sour, the birds were only interested in the stone’s kernel.
For Neville it was an annual treat to lie under the canopy and watch as debris of discarded cherry flesh and shells fell ‘like hail’ all around him. From his description it seems that the whole family was at work. But this cannot be possible because the juvenile bird’s partially ossified skull is unable to cope with huge shearing force required to split cherry stones. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine how just two parents could produce an effect like hail. So, it’s very likely he was in the presence of more than one family as different birds moved in and out the dense canopy above.
This account suggests the idea that the cherry kernel is exceptionally important to the Hawfinch. But that’s odd because the harvesting of hard seeds and nuts by birds tends to be associated with autumn and winter foraging not with the rearing of recently flown nestlings. So why the attraction of the Gean’s well protected kernel in the breeding season? Perhaps there is a vital reward of essential nutrients in their kernels – a supplement to be fed to the fledglings.
If that’s true why not change the bird’s name to Cherry Finch? What an original thought. Not so, only a little searching of the literature will produce the name, Cherry Finch. In fact turns up in a number of old books plus, there are frequent references to the period of ripening in July. So, it seems clear that country folk and naturalists were thinking on the same lines long ago.
Now for key to all this: The name seems to come from the bird’s past reputation as a horticultural pest. For example, every July in Kent in the late 19th century, dozens of shot Hawfinches were gibbeted around the orchards in order to deter more raiding parties. Mountfort’s highly detailed chapter on the bird’s diet also emphasises the cherry connection. He describes how cherry orchards were vital for the large breeding colonies of the finch in the 19th and early 20th century and he admits that any damage to the crop was of ‘a certain amount,’ before tempering that remark by stating that the bird chiefly takes insects to feed young fledglings when the fruit is ripe. He too came across the mass gibbets and describes them as ‘a quite unjustifiable slaughter’.
Finally, tucked away, two chapters later, is an astonishing yet brief reference to a discovery in 1910 of a subfossil bird sealed in Pleistocene flood sediments, up to one million years old, in Poland. In its perfectly preserved stomach were the kernels of Wild Cherry.
That cracks it: Hawfinch, no. Cherry- or Gean-finch, yes.
Murray – thank you for a great comment.
I too really enjoyed reading your comment Murray. Francesca Greenoak’s All the Birds of the Air reports that Cherry Finch is an old Yorkshire folk name for Hawfinch, but this is not in the Oxford Book of British Bird Names. Bizarrely it gives Cherry Chopper as an old Worcestershire name for Spotted Flycatcher from an unexplained misconception that it attacks cherries. Greenoak also suggests that “Haws” might refer to hedgerows (OE haga is a hedge or enclosure). My friend Roy Taylor once worked on Song Thrushes in Sussex (supervised by Mark Avery) and he frequently encountered Hawfinches in hedgerows around arable land where they fed on seeds of Field Maple. I also enjoyed reading Guy Mountfort’s monograph many years ago, I think before I had ever seen a Hawfinch, and it is still one of my most prized books. Mountfort enlisted the help of RW Sims at the British Museum to work out how much pressure was needed to crack cherry stones, which was 60-95 pounds. He also tested Olive stones as Mediterranean Hawfinches feed on those. These needed even more pressure to crack at 106-159 pounds.
Thanks – as per Mark above.
Yes, Greenoak’s book is great. I’d forgotten her.
Just found some other notes:
Jeremy Mynott’s book (is it out yet?) may have classical references to Coccothraustes especially to do with the even harder olive stone – another story.
The Evening Grosbeak in the US: I wonder if it has a similar July feeding behaviours? It is in the same genus as the Hawfinch.
Pleistocene flood sediments: Was this a summer or winter flood? (The latter is the more likely because the victim would have been foraging on the ground. There must be plant and pollen signals in the surrounding sediments that gave/give the answer. Unfortunately Mountfort gives no reference for this discovery and nothing can be found online).
Is there a vital reward of essential nutrients in cherry kernels? Mountfort says the nestlings are fed ‘a supplement of crushed seeds’ in addition to their usual invertebrate diet.
The German name is: ?Kierschebiesser- Cherry Splitter?
Hi Murray. The German name is Kernbeisser which translates as kernel or stone (in the fruit sense) biter. The French call it the Gros-bec Casse-noyaux which is the big beaked stone/kernel breaker.
The Rev Charles Swainson’s provincial names of British Birds (1885) gives Cherry Finch and Berry Breaker as names for hawfinch with latter ascribed to Hampshire. He also gives ‘Grosbeak’, ‘Coble’ (apparently in Sir Thos. Browne’s ‘Birds of Norfolk’) and ‘Kate’ with no explanation for the latter.
Under any name it is a bird that is always a thrill to see and we are lucky to see them reasonably frequently around my wife’s family home in Germany.
Thanks, Jonathan for the correction and comment.
Swainsom — I’ll look out for him.
Hi Murray. Yalden and Albarella’s History of British Birds says that the Hawfinch appears to be disproportionately abundant in the fossil record with an almost unbelievable 9500 records from Britain. Recorded from 16 sites, mostly caves, mostly late glacial, but also Mesolithic. It also mentions that a Hawfinch mounted probably by Gilbert White in 1791 is the second oldest stuffed bird in Britain (after the Duchess of Richmond’s African Grey Parrot from 1702). Reid-Henry and Harrison’s History of the Birds in Britain mentions a sixteenth century East Anglian reference to Hawfinch as a summer garden raider.
Witherby et al mention diet as kernels and seeds of many kinds (eg Sloe, Bird-cherry, Cherry, plum, bullace, yew, hawthorn, hornbeam, sycamore, maple, Daphne and laurel. Larvae of currant moth are eaten in June and Naumann says the young are fed on insects.
BWP has a lengthy section but says they feed mainly in woodland trees in spring and summer, in hedges and on ground in autumn and winter. It also gives data on a largely caterpillar diet for the nestlings, but also on regurgitated seed pulp from the gullet. It also mentions that captive Hawfinches ate on average 258 Hornbeam seeds per day (fresh weight 3.4g 23.4kj), 495 cherry kernels (5.5g dry weight) or 500 mixed seeds. I’m wondering whether the captive birds were assisted by nutcrackers or whether they actually cracked 495 cherry stones per day.
Tim, thank you for all that meaty and nutty research.
So, it’s the Cave Finch? Goodness me, how on earth did so many non-troglodyte foragers end up as fossils in caves? For one species of bird to have just one fossil to its name is lucky enough, but to have nearly a thousand, that’s bizarre.
CORRECTION: Just checked Yalden & co and your figure of 9,500 seems to derive from Table 8.6, p192, first column N and is ‘after Table 9’ in the1993 Breeding Bird Atlas: 9,500 Hawfinches is the estimated number of individuals for the whole of the British Isles at that time.
However you are quite correct about the bird’s disproportionate abundance in the fossil record. I think you are referring to p71, where he states, re Britain’s Mesolithic birds, that: ‘… woodland passerines might have included large numbers of Hawfinch, a species which does (because of its distinctive size?) get reported more frequently than expected from archaeological sites.’
As per the 16 caves figure, I haven’t read nearly enough to know if that is proportionately high or not.
It’s funny how things get overlooked: I’ve just read your comment for the fourth time and suddenly spotted your Reid-Henry and Harrison ref. So, now it’s straight back to AbeBooks.com. Thanks,Tim. What else am I missing?
“Cherry stones (the kernels) contain amygdalin, a compound which, when ingested (in humans anyway), breaks down into hydrogen cyanide.”
Presumably hawfinches aren’t affected?
Yes, that’s what I was wondering about.
Thanks, it was cobbled together from half-forgotten, scattered notes made in 2015. I’m grateful to this blog for being a useful source of antidotes to winter lethargy and gripes.
Murray Marr,
Interesting research.
I am not sure how cherry stones develop but they will undergo a hardening as they mature. Especially as they dry out. (Think conkers) Maybe at some stage they are soft enough for the young birds to break. July is quite along month in terms of plant development.
Presumably like all seed and grain they go through a milky stage and this is what many young finches are fed on as it is easier to digest so I guess the same happens with Hawfinches.
I bought a bag of desert cherries from the grocers and planted the resulting saplings among other things round the edge of wood as they look pretty in flower and with the red autumn colour. They all taste good though some are a bit small. They are up high now so all we need now are the Hawfinches.
I heard they were to be found feeding on hornbeam seed.
Thanks Andrew for that. Yes, my armchair musings came up with same thought re soft young stones. Your idea needs testing next July.
What a brilliant discussion. Thankyou!