The Goldfinch – beautiful, melodic, captivating or captive!
What wonderful birds, and a pleasure to see and hear them around St Leonards and Hastings. We have a small flock that regularly feed on our seed feeders and on the Plane Tree seeds in our street – see opening picture. They also enjoy the berries on the enormous holly tree in our neighbour’s garden.
Easy to Identify
The Goldfinch is unmistakable, with its red, black and white head and gold flash in the wing. Males and females are similar, though the females tend to have a smaller red mask and stouter beak than the male, and less gold. Juveniles lack the distinctive red, black and white until their first moult – see below.
They are a widely distributed species across Europe and Asia, and it is satisfying to know that their numbers are stable, or if anything increasing in the UK, being one of the species that has benefited from the growth in garden feeders.
Goldfinches in Your Garden
Goldfinches feed almost exclusively on seeds, and occasionally take insects when they are rearing their young.
The results of British Trust for Ornithology’s garden feeding survey published in 2015 suggest that sunflower hearts are their preferred supplementary food, indeed preferred over nyger seed which is often sold as the most attractive seed for Goldfinches.
But left to their own devices teasel, thistle and dandelion heads are firm favourites.
Goldfinches are gregarious birds at all times. During the breeding season they are seen in small groups, sometimes three of four pairs nesting in close proximity, often high in the upper branches of tall trees. In autumn the group size can increase to dozens of birds.
During the winter there is local movement south. Many birds from our area will head to Southern Europe, and the numbers of those that remain will be supplemented by birds from Northern Europe and Scandinavia.
The Call Is Its Downfall
It is the liquid twittering and song that often attracts attention to their presence. At times I’ve heard them during the summer calling among the trees at the top end of St Leonards Gardens, where I’m sure they nest.
And it is the song that was once their downfall in the UK. They were very popular caged birds, kept for their perky appearance and lovely song. In the early days, the majority of these birds were captured from the wild. But UK legislation in the mid 1900s made it illegal to keep wild caught British birds.
The impact of trapping on the numbers and distribution of Goldfinches only became obvious when the legislation combined with a more enlightened attitude towards the keeping of wild caught caged birds began to take effect. This has resulted in the number and range of the Goldfinch in the UK to steadily increase over the last 20 to 30 years. In 2021 they were ranked eighth most common garden bird in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.
The Caged Bird
I found it difficult to imagine that the trapping of wild birds for the pet industry could have such a significant effect on the population as a whole until I came across this recent article on Goldfinches in Algeria.
A university research team undertook a survey in the city of Guelma in 2017. They estimate that: ” … almost 60% of households had a cage bird, with the European Goldfinch being the most popular species. With a mean of 0.75 Goldfinches per household we estimate that in Guelma alone some 17,000 are kept in captivity.“1
Keeping wild caught caged song birds is popular throughout the countries bordering the Mediterranean, and the Guelma study attempts to understand why such a hobby is so popular, and how the impact on wild populations of birds could be reduced through the influence of social media.
It is also important to remember that developments in the UK illustrate that the wild bird population does recover once legislation is enforced and people become more enlightened about the issue of the capture and trade in wild birds for pets … a subject no doubt that would open a Pandora’s box of issues at least as controversial as those on the shooting of game birds. See:
https://woodcockwood.com/the-release-of-pheasant-and-red-legged-partridge/
1 “European Goldfinches Carduelis carduelis as pets in Algeria: numbers and social dimension of a conservation issue”, Aldjia Louadi et al., Bird Conservation International (2021), page 1 of 9. © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of BirdLife International.