Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The American Goldfinch
by Tom Berg
A common visitor to back yard bird feeders is the brightly-colored American goldfinch. These small finches are easy to identify by their coloration. Adult males are bright yellow with black wings and a black cap on their head. Their black wings and tails are also marked with white bars. Females are a much duller yellowish-olive color.
Goldfinches can be seen in most areas of the country year-round, and if you have a bird feeder with thistle seed (niger seed) you will have no trouble attracting these handsome birds. They also eat sunflower seeds and other seeds, but thistle seeds are one of their favorites at bird feeders. In the wild they also eat a wide assortment of weed and grass seeds, dandelion, maple, alder, milkweed and ragweed seeds.
When goldfinches build their nest, they use grasses and plant fibers. They line the nest with fluffy plant down like the soft fibers from dandelion seed heads and milkweed seedpods. The nest is often anchored to the branches of the tree or bush with strands of spider silk, and the nest is usually woven so tightly that it can hold water.
Although most seed-eating birds (granivores) often supplement their diet with a variety of insects, American goldfinches do not. They are strictly vegetarian and they only eat seeds. In fact, when parasitic cowbirds lay one of their eggs in a goldfinch nest, the cowbird hatchling quickly dies, because it cannot survive on the seed-only diet that goldfinches provide for their young.
American goldfinches are also the only finch species that molts their feathers twice per year. In the late-winter or early spring the males molt into their beautiful neon-yellow color phase. After their late summer breeding season, goldfinches molt into their fall/winter plumage which is much duller. At that point both males and females are somewhat olive-brown in color, although the males do have more yellow on their shoulders.
Keep an eye out for goldfinches. If you supply the seeds in your back yard bird feeders, they will come!
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