What they like

Quiet deciduous woods, old parks and fairly large gardens with big shrubs. Think: hornbeam, field maple, hawthorn, blackthorn, rowan and cherry. Leave scruffy corners: dense greenery to hide in, open spots to land. In farmland? Create wide hedgerows and scrub edges and connect them to small copses. One lone shrub is decoration. A line of shrubs is habitat.

Ecological importance

Hawfinch with precision work: it cracks seeds and hard pits open where other birds give up. Eats mainly seeds, buds and pits (hornbeam, cherry, plum); in the breeding season also insects for the young. It itself is on the menu of goshawk and sparrowhawk. Dense cover is therefore not a luxury but life insurance.

When in the Netherlands

Year-round. In some winters extra birds arrive from the northeast.

Status

Breeding bird and resident. Numbers fluctuate, but good scrub and seed-bearing trees really make a difference.