American Goldfinch

About the American Goldfinch

A small finch with a short conical bill and a deeply notched tail. The breeding male is the familiar canary-yellow bird with a black cap, black wings, and white wingbars, but that is not how Texas usually sees him. In winter both sexes are a drab olive-buff, and the birds at a Texas feeder in January are often mistaken for something else entirely - only the black wings with their pale bars and the sharp notched tail give them away.

Goldfinches are strict vegetarians to an unusual degree, feeding on seeds almost exclusively and feeding the same to their young. They hang acrobatically from seed heads, working thistle and sunflower, and travel in loose flocks with a bouncing, undulating flight, calling a bright per-chick-o-ree on every rise.

Their diet dictates their calendar. They nest later than nearly any other North American songbird, waiting until midsummer when thistle down is available both to line the nest and to feed the chicks.

In most of Texas this is a winter bird, arriving in numbers through the autumn and staying into spring, when males moult into that startling yellow before heading north. A flock going through a stand of dry sunflowers on a cold morning is one of the reliable winter pleasures here.