(_Spinus tristis_) Finch family
_Called also_: WILD CANARY; YELLOWBIRD; THISTLE BIRD
(See frontispiece)
_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.
[Illustration: REDSTART (Upper Figure, Female; Lower Figure, Male)]
[Illustration: BALTIMORE ORIOLE (Upper Figure, Male;
Lower Figure, Female)]