A Pet's View / August 2005
The Thistle Bird – Goldfinch
By Mary Santer
The American Goldfinch is a bird of many aliases: wild canary, yellowbird, lettuce bird, and thistle bird, to name a few. Which name a person uses often reveals a lot about their interest and hobbies. Serious birders call them by their “official” name, American Goldfinch. A gardening enthusiast might call them “lettuce bird” due to the bird’s prac tice of nibbling at the tender young leaves of this vegetable. Most casual birdwatchers simply use the term “wild canary” because the Goldfinch’s magnificent yellow and black coloration reminds them of a pet store canary. Goldfinches are found across North America. They are actually in the finch family as their name suggests.
A rarely used, but debatably more accu rate name, is “thistle bird”. It has long been known that thistle plants and goldfinch are almost inseparable, and even its genus name, Caruelis, is from the Latin word carduus, meaning “thistle”. Each year, goldfinches don winter clothes: the dull-green coat of feathers grown each fall has an especially dense layer of soft, pluma ceous feathers to provide extra insulation. They have an interesting flight call with four syllables that can be likened to “potato-chip.
Goldfinches prefer to nest in habitat with trees and shrubs, usually placing their nest 4-10 feet high, often near a water source. They will sometimes nest in a loose colony. They weave their nest so tightly that it will temporarily hold water.
Goldfinches usually lay 5 pale-blue or greenish-blue eggs that will hatch in about 12 days. Babies will fledge about 12 days after that. Nest cleaning ceases about a week after the babies hatch.
The birds are common feeder visitors that prefer Nyjer seed and sunflowers, acrobatically dipping upside down, feeding on weed seeds, coneflowers and sunflowers. Though Goldfinches will hang upside down to eat, experiments with specially designed feeders have shown they pre fer to dine upright if possible.
They prefer feeders hung above head height in trees, but if there is no choice, they will accept just about any feeder design, at any height.
Goldfinches rely heavily on thistle plants as a source of food and for nest building materials. During a research study in Michigan that observed over 250 nests, no nest was ever found more than 300 yards away from an abundant supply of thistle seed. Goldfinches delay the start of their nesting behavior until the thistles come into bloom so the can anticipate an abundant and reliable supple of seeds for their young. Look for the blossoms any day now, and keep finch feeders filled with fresh Nyjer seed, often referred to as thistle seed, to welcome the nesting “thistle birds” to a backyard refuge.
Mary Santer is the owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Parkersburg. For more infor mation, call (304) 485-9884 or email: sfml4wildbirds@aol.com.
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