THE AMERICAN GOLDFINCH:
A favourite backyard songbird
The American goldfinch (Carduelis tristis) is easily recognized for its remarkable plumage and bold wing patterns. Weighing only about half an ounce, this tiny bird is roughly one-fifth of the size of a robin and is smaller than a sparrow.
Also known as the “wild canary,” the male’s bright yellow plumage gleams in the sunshine as these gregarious birds flit from flower to flower with their characteristic undulating flight. An oft repeated description of the goldfinch comes from an early 20th century American author called A.C. Bent who writes of “a definite personality exemplifying lighthearted cheerfulness, restlessness, sociability, and untiring activity.” Their flight call is a distinctive descending series of notes and sounds like per-chik’-oree.
The birds are frequent visitors to our backyard bird feeders and in the summer months I have seen them sit for minutes at a time, calmly nibbling seeds and unwilling to move if disturbed by other birds. However, gathering in larger flocks in the winter months, the birds frantically vie with each other for a spot on our feeders and are often aggressively seen off by a more dominate male.
A seedy diet
Bird feeders are an important supplemental food source for goldfinches in the colder months, especially when their natural food is scarce. However, we also feed them in the summer, enjoying their cheerful presence as we go about working in the garden. These birds are mostly vegetarian, their natural diet consisting almost exclusively of seeds from flowering plants and trees and only consuming the odd bug they encounter while foraging for seeds.
Favoured plants include thistle, sunflower, aster, coneflower and milkweed plus tree seeds from alder, birch and white cedar. The birds are adept at balancing atop flimsy swaying flower heads as they extract the tiny seeds, even when hanging upside down.
During the COVID lockdown in 2021, a local family put a yellow cup filled with soil and a few sunflower seeds in mailboxes all along our road as a project for her children. The seeds readily germinated so this could be a fun and easy project for children this summer. The showy flowers can grow quite tall and just might attract the goldfinches.
Dramatic colour change
Unlike most songbirds that moult just once in late summer, the goldfinch moults twice a year, but it is the male that dramatically changes its appearance. In late summer, many of its bright yellow feathers are replaced with a less conspicuous greenish grey, very similar to that of the female.
This is a good time to moult, lying as it is between nesting and migration, with mild temperatures and an abundance of food.
However, the birds begin a second partial moult in February, and over the following few months the male will yet again transform itself, displaying its black cap and brilliant yellow suit to attract a mate for the coming nesting season and is a sure sign that spring is on the way. The males are monogamous only in the breeding season and usually seek a new mate each spring, hence the need to look bright and beautiful.
In this photo, the male is already beginning to change into its breeding colours in late January. Don Sutherland, one of Ontario’s premier naturalists, has described this bird as a probable second year male though he did note “American goldfinches are notoriously difficult to age, as they are in a nearly constant state of moult and it is only during the nesting season when they aren’t actually moulting some feathers!”
Nesting and nestlings
The goldfinches are late nesters to coincide with weed seed production and consequently they have only one brood per year. The nest is cup-shaped and is mostly built in low trees and shrubs. It is lined with the fluffy material from seed heads of cattails, milkweed, and dandelion (a positive use of dandelions that proliferate all over our lawns and gardens!). Only the female builds the nest though the male will collect material for her. The nest is very tightly constructed and during a heavy downpour, the female must use her body to protect her eggs and offspring or they could drown.
The female lays four to six small pale blue eggs roughly the size of a peanut and she alone incubates the eggs. Both parents will feed the young though the male provides most of the food as time goes on. Nesting birds tend to be silent on approaching a nest so as to keep the location away from prying eyes of potential nest robbers but these songbirds have been heard singing no only near the nest but actually on it. According to the Cornell Lab website ‘All About Birds’, males can make a courtship call upon landing near a female and a brooding female will sing when she hears her mate approaching with food.
The young are reared on a strictly seedy diet unlike most hatchlings which are primarily fed on bugs for needed protein. The offspring fledge 11 to 17 days after hatching.
Migration: ‘The North-South Divide’
I was very surprised to learn that the goldfinches we see at our feeders in the winter are not the same as those we see in the summer. A study in Guelph involving colourbanded goldfinches in 1978 by A.L.A. Middleton, a retired professor at Guelph University, indicated the local breeding population left the area heading south as winter approached and was replaced by a distinct wintering population. It still remains unclear to this day how and why these two disparate groups evolved.
Project Feederwatch
For the first time this winter I joined Birds Canada’s “Project Feederwatch”, a survey of birds that visit our feeders from November to April every year. I am thoroughly enjoying adding my tally of birds to those from thousands of participants across North America to enable scientists to monitor our winter bird population. For more information about this continentwide project, you can check out their website at feederwatch.org.
I have been able to submit tallies for up to 12 species that regularly visit our feeders. The American goldfinch claims the highest total by far with more than 50 birds on a single day, and I am not alone in seeing high numbers this winter. The Peterborough Christmas Bird Count recorded 1,139 which Drew Monkman has indicated is higher than usual. According to Don Sutherland, “generally good crops of alder and white birch together with a great many bird feeders and generally mild temperatures almost certainly contributed to the high count on the Peterborough CBC.”
It's great to know that bird feeders in the Peterborough area are doing their part in attracting higher numbers of this most welcome bird into our wintry landscape. And when our winter goldfinches migrate further north to breed, our summer goldfinches will soon arrive to brighten up the dullest of days with their golden presence.