Those Finches

There are 13 species of finch in the Galapagos, with names such as the large ground finch, medium ground finch, small ground finch, cactus ground finch and so on. They come in shades of mostly grey and brown with variations in beak shape and size, and all look quite similar. Living in the National Park means we have large numbers of birds around our house. They do however consider our house to be part of their territory and come inside on a daily basis. Most will scavenge for a few crumbs and find their way out the door again but they frequently need rescuing when they go into the front porch or one of the bedrooms. The other day we had four in the house at once all trying to get out. The ones in the bedroom sat on the mosquito net over the bed and managed to deposit several droppings onto our pillow cases. I took them off, washed them and hung them on the line to dry. One of the finches favoured spots to sit out in the garden is the clothes line. When I later took the dry washing in I noticed fresh bird droppings on the clean pillow cases.