The average Goldfinch is 12–13 cm long with a wingspan of 21–25 cm and a weight of 14 to 19 grams. The sexes are broadly similar, with a red face, black and white head, warm brown upperparts, white underparts with buff flanks and breast patches, and black and yellow wings.
On closer inspection male Goldfinches can often be distinguished by a larger, darker red mask that extends just behind the eye. In females, the red face does not reach the eye. The ivory-coloured bill is long and pointed, and the tail is forked. Goldfinches in breeding condition have a white bill, with a greyish or blackish mark at the tip for the rest of the year. Juveniles have a plain head and a greyer back but are unmistakable due to the yellow wing stripe. Birds in central Asia (caniceps group) have a plain grey head behind the red face, lacking the black and white head pattern of European and western Asian birds.[9][10]
The goldfinch is native to Europe, North Africa, and western and central Asia. It is found in open, partially wooded lowlands and is a resident in the milder west of its range, but migrates from colder regions. It will also make local movements, even in the west, to escape bad weather. It has been introduced to many areas of the world.[11] It was introduced at numerous places in south-easternAustralia in the 19th century, and their populations quickly increased and their range expanded greatly. They now occur from Brisbane to the Eyre Peninsula.[12]
The goldfinch’s preferred food is small seeds such as those from thistles (the Latin name is from Carduus, a genus of thistles) andteasels, but insects are also taken when feeding young. It also regularly visits bird feeders in winter. Goldfinches nest in the outer twigs of tall leafy trees, or even in bamboo, laying four to six eggs, which hatch in 11–14 days.
In the winter goldfinches group together to form flocks of up to forty, occasionally more.
The song is a pleasant silvery twittering. The call is a melodic tickeLIT, and the song is a pleasant tinkling medley of trills and twitters, but always including the trisyllabic call phrase or a teLLIT-teLLIT-teLLIT.
In earlier times, the Goldfinch was kept as a cagebird for its song. Escapes from captivity and deliberate releases have colonised southeastern Australia and New Zealand.
Goldfinches are attracted to back gardens in Europe and North America by birdfeeders containing niger (commercially described as nyjer) seed. This seed of an annual from South Asia is small, and high in oils. Special polycarbonate feeders with small oval slits at which the Goldfinches feed are sometimes used.
Goldfinches are commonly kept and bred in captivity around the world because of their distinctive appearance and pleasant song. The goldfinch males are sometimes crossed with Canary females with the intention to produce male mules with beautiful singing voices, that often capture the best singing attributes of both breeds.
Because of the thistle seeds it eats, in Christian symbolism the goldfinch is associated with Christ‘s Passion and his crown of thorns. The goldfinch, appearing in pictures of the Madonna and Christ child, represents the foreknowledge Jesus and Mary had of the Crucifixion. Examples include the Madonna del cardellino or Madonna of the Goldfinch, painted by the Italian renaissance artist Raphael in about 1505–6, in which John the Baptist offers the goldfinch to Christ in warning of his future. In Barocci‘s Holy Family a goldfinch is held in the hand of John the Baptist who holds it high out of reach of an interested cat. In Cima da Conegliano‘s Madonna and Child, a goldfinch flutters in the hand of the Christ child. It is also an emblem of endurance, fruitfulness, and persistence. Because it symbolizes the Passion, the goldfinch is considered a “saviour” bird and may be pictured with the common fly (which represents sin and disease).[13] The goldfinch is also associated with Saint Jerome and appears in some depictions of him.[13]
Antonio Vivaldi composed a Concerto in D major for Flute “Il Gardellino” (RV 428, Op. 10 No. 3), where the singing of the Goldfinch is imitated by a flute.
Goldfinches, with their “wanton freak” and “yellow flutterings”, are among the many natural “luxuries” that delight the speaker of John Keats‘s poem ‘I stood tip-toe upon a little hill…’ (1816).[14]
In the much admired poem The Great Hunger by Patrick Kavanagh the goldfinch is one of the rare glimpses of beauty in the life of an elderly Irish farmer-
a man might imagine…. these birds the birds of paradise.
Donna Tartt‘s novel The Goldfinch won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[15][16] A turning point in the plot occurs when the narrator, Theo, sees his mother’s favourite painting, Carel Fabritius‘s The Goldfinch, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
(From Wikipedia, July 3rd, 2014)