This morning as I looked outside, I was checking to see if I needed to refill my feeders. I quickly saw that there were hardly any sunflower seeds left from the day before when Dennis had filled them. So I put that on my to do list for the day. Even though there weren't many seeds for them to eat, I saw a quick fly in of some tiny birds. After I looked more closely, I saw a wing pattern that I recognized. It was an American Goldfinch.
As I continued watching, I realized there was a whole flock of them in my trees and on my feeders!
The American Goldfinch is easily recognized when it is mating season, but is hard to distinguish when its mating colors aren’t revealed. The males lose their bright yellow plumage during winter months and so it is hard to know if the bird that you are looking at is a male or female.
Their winter coloring is a drab olive green with wing bars that are very subtle to see on these cloudy winter days. Goldfinches molt their feathers twice a year - during the fall the feathers that grow back are much denser than their spring/summer feathers according to the Wild Birds Unlimited Nature Site.
The closer it gets to spring mating their colors will change from a baby chick yellow to a bold tropical bird looking yellow. He has a black feather cap that goes down to his tan beak and side to side to his black eyes. The black and white bar feathers no longer are hard to see because they are up against the bright yellow feathers. His feet are the same tan color as his beak.
Last fall I trimmed off my Black Eyed Susan seed pods because after a while they just make your flower beds look dried up and unkept. But, I had kept the pods and saved them to put out in preparation of the spring mating season that will soon be upon us.
Today when I went to my sunflower seed canisters, I saw my box of saved seeds sitting on my potting table and suddenly remembered saving them. I took the box to my sunflower seed feeder trays and added several Black-Eyed Susan seed pods for the Goldfinch to eat.
Goldfinches love Black-Eyed Susan seeds. They look very similar to nyjer seeds, but I’m not sure if they taste different to the finches. Goldfinch diets consist mostly of sunflower seeds and nyjer, but they also enjoy small seeds such as millet. Surprisingly they have two favorite weed seeds that they love to eat - dandelions and burdock! We usually work hard to get rid of these!
When we do this, we are losing valuable free food for our birds that visit us!
Goldfinches travel in small flocks and often gather with other types of finches. Even today as I saw them in my backyard they were traveling with house finches. They filled my trees with musical notes of songs that made me smile. I heard them having little conversations with each other and suddenly heard them say “Sweeee?”
I read in my “Backyard Bird Feeder Bible” that Debbie Perkins gave me, that Goldfinches love taking a bath. The author said that she had them in her birdbath and even in her dog’s water bowl all the time, but I haven’t seen them in my birdbath that I know of. All birds though must bathe regularly because if they don’t, then the oil on their feathers will build up and soon they are not able to fly.
Goldfinches are good natured birds that may bicker a bit with each other, but behave very well with other birds that are about their size. I look forward to seeing these beautiful little birds.
Spring is coming and as we “Look at the birds of the air….” Matthew 6:26 we will see beautiful winged creatures come to visit us from the sky.
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