Length -- 5 to 5.2 inches. About an inch smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male -- In summer plumage: Bright yellow, except on crown of
head, frontlet, wings, and tail, which are black. Whitish
markings on wings give effect of bands. Tail with white on
inner webs. In winter plumage: Head yellow-olive; no frontlet;
black drab, with reddish tinge; shoulders and throat yellow;
soiled brownish white underneath.
Female -- Brownish olive above, yellowish white beneath.
Range -- North America, from the tropics to the Fur Countries and
westward to the Columbia River and California. Common
throughout its range.
Migrations -- May-October. Common summer resident, frequently
Seen throughout the winter as well.
An old field, overgrown with thistles and tall, stalky wild flowers, is the
paradise of the goldfinches, summer or winter. Here they congregate in happy
companies while the sunshine and goldenrod are as bright as their feathers,
and cling to the swaying slender stems that furnish an abundant harvest,
daintily. lunching upon the fluffy seeds of thistle blossoms, pecking at the
mullein-stalks, and swinging airily among the asters and Michaelmas daisies;
or, when snow covers the same field with a glistening crust, above which the
brown stalks offer only a meagre dinner, the same birds, now sombrely clad in
winter feathers, cling to the swaying stems with cheerful fortitude.
At your approach, the busy company rises on the wing, and with peculiar, wavy
flight rise and fall through the air, marking each undulation with a cluster
of notes, sweet and clear, that come floating downward from the blue ether,
where the birds seem to bound along exultant in their motion and song alike.
In the spring the plumage of the goldfinch, which has been drab and brown
through the winter months, is moulted or shed -- a change that transforms the
bird from a sombre Puritan into the gayest of cavaliers, and seems to
wonderfully exalt his spirits. He bursts into a wild, sweet, incoherent melody
that might be the outpouring from two or three throats at once instead of one,
expressing his rapture somewhat after the manner of the canary, although his
song lacks the variety and the finish of his caged namesake. What tone of
sadness in his music the man found who applied the adjective tristis to his
scientific name it is difficult to imagine when listening to the notes that
come bubbling up from the bird's happy heart.
With plumage so lovely and song so delicious and dreamy, it is small wonder
that numbers of our goldfinches are caught and caged, however inferior their
song may be to the European species recently introduced into this country.
Heard in Central Park, New York, where they were set at liberty, the European
goldfinches seemed to sing with more abandon, perhaps, but with no more
sweetness than their American cousins. The song remains at its best all
through the summer months, for the bird is a long wooer. It is nearly July
before he mates, and not until the tardy cedar birds are house-building in the
orchard do the happy pair begin to carry grass, moss, and plant-down to a
crotch of some tall tree convenient to a field of such wild flowers as will
furnish food to a growing family. Doubtless the birds wait for this food to be
in proper condition before they undertake parental duties at all
-- the most plausible excuse for their late nesting. The cares evolving from
four to six pale-blue eggs will suffice to quiet the father's song for the
winter by the first of September, and fade all the glory out of his shining
coat. As pretty a sight as any garden offers is when a family of goldfinches
alights on the top of a sunflower to feast upon the oily seeds -- a perfect
harmony of brown and gold.