Nyjer

Like many people, we put out nyjer seed for our birds.This small oil-rich seed is attractive to many species, particularly goldfinches.

In the United States, nyjer seed is heat-treated to stop it germinating and becoming a noxious weed. I'm not sure whether this is the case in the UK, but we usually have a good number of seedlings germinating under our feeder. These are usually killed off by the frost before they have a chance to flower.

This year, a number of the nyjer plants have flowered,and are quite charming, almost like tiny single sunflowers with tridentate outer petals. The scientific name of the plant is Guizotia abyssinica and it's an annual species that was originally grown in the highlands of Ethiopia. It can supposedly grow very tall, but ours is only about 20cm in height.

It was very grey and cloudy again for most of the day, but the bird feeders were very busy. I spent a bit of time trying to record the visitors, but light levels were so low that I had to use ridiculously high ISO settings. I was quite pleased with the composition of some, but they were noisy and soft, and couldn't cope with being seen in large. For anyone who's interested I've posted some of them here.