We moved house two years ago, from a house whose garden was rarely visited by birds, to one that gets a reasonable number of the usual suspects – given our inner London location we can’t expect too much, I guess. Last year saw a brief visit from the goldfinches; this year they’ve pretty much moved in. I look out of the kitchen window before setting off to work and they’re on the feeder; come home from work: still there. The annual nyger seed budget was blown weeks ago.

Photographing them isn’t easy – they fly off at the first sign of human movement, and they’re pretty much in constant motion. Here are my best efforts to date: