Chalk, cheese and finches

ONE change in my set-up this year has been the earwigs turning up before the seed mite! I think that the unseasonably mild weather at the New Year brought them forward, because I saw a few in the aviaries in February.

In previous years, an eruption of seed mite has been followed by an invasion of earwigs – with the seed-mite population then taking a battering! They basically disappear I presume via the digestive system of the earwigs. So you get natural control, without a whiff of insecticide.

This year, with the earwigs having come first, then I don’t expect to see