FINCHforum

just thought id share a natural and widely available source of green food that is becomeing available, but will only be around for a few weeks.

the breaking buds and tender new leaves of hawthorn are very nutritious and very eddible! simply snip off a few twigs that have freshly broken buds with the leaf tips just poking through, or the pale green newly emmerged leaves, pick off any thorns and hang up in your finches cage or flight, they love it and ive found it gets them in the mood for luurve too, lets them know spring has arrived. canaries and canary family (green singers, siskins, goldfinches ect) particularly apperciate them.

once the leave are fully emerged they are usualy ignored however, so get them with the buds half open while they are available.

larger twigs also make nice perching for smaller finches once the buds are spent too

Many thanks...Great

That's interesting information. I don't have hawthorn, but I do have mulberry just starting to bud and bloom. Do you know if that would be safe?

jabo322 wrote:That's interesting information. I don't have hawthorn, but I do have mulberry just starting to bud and bloom. Do you know if that would be safe?

no idea about mulberry. hmmm.. trying to remember way back when i used to collect the "bird keeper" magazine and it had a feture topic for a while about safe and poisonous plants and i seem to remember mulberry being listed as toxic but im not 100% sure.

not sure if you have hawthorn over there, but its a widely used hedging plant here