American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis): Facts and Seasonal Colors

Appearance

In spring and summer, the adult male is hard to miss: a brilliant lemon-yellow body, a neat black cap on the forehead, black wings with white bars and a white patch at the base of the tail that shows in flight. The short, conical bill turns bright orange in spring in both sexes and fades to pinkish later in the year.

The female is more subdued. In summer she is olive-yellow above and duller yellow below, without a black cap, but with the same dark wings and pale wing bars. After the fall molt both sexes look much alike: buffy brown or olive above, pale gray-buff below, with a yellowish wash on the face and throat. Winter males can still be told by their blacker wings and yellow shoulder patches.

Juveniles in late summer and fall are warm brown above with buffy, not white, wing bars. The yellow in the adult male’s feathers comes from carotenoid pigments in the plants it eats; the bird cannot make these pigments itself. The full story of the two molts is told in why goldfinches change color.

How big is an American goldfinch?

The American goldfinch is a little smaller than a house sparrow.

Habitat and range

American goldfinches are birds of open, weedy country. They live in old fields, meadows, floodplains, roadsides, orchards, overgrown farmland, parks and suburban gardens, as well as along the edges of open deciduous woods and streamside thickets. What they need most are plants that produce seed heads, such as thistles, asters, sunflowers and grasses.

In summer, the species breeds from southern Canada across much of the United States, south to about North Carolina in the east and northern California in the west. In winter, it occurs from southern Canada through most of the United States into northern and central Mexico.

Goldfinches are short-distance migrants. Northern birds usually move south as food becomes scarce and temperatures fall, while many birds in the middle of the range stay all year. Winter movements are irregular and depend on seed crops, so a garden may have many goldfinches one winter and few the next. Four subspecies are recognized, differing slightly in size and shade; the western willow goldfinch, for example, is browner in winter and has a smaller black cap in summer.

Diet: one of the strictest vegetarians among birds

The American goldfinch is a granivore, a bird that lives mainly on seeds. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes it as one of the strictest vegetarians in the bird world. It eats the seeds of thistles, teasel, dandelions, ragweed, mullein, goatsbeard, sunflowers, asters, grasses and trees such as alder, birch and elm. It also takes tree buds, maple sap and some berries, and swallows insects only occasionally, mostly by accident.

Its feet are as important as its bill. A goldfinch often hangs upside down or clings sideways to a seed head while it pulls seeds out with its pointed bill. In spring, it can pull up a dangling birch or alder catkin and hold it against a twig with its toes. These acrobatic skills let it reach food that heavier birds cannot.

At backyard feeders, American goldfinches favor small black nyjer (niger) seed, often sold as “thistle seed” although it comes from a different plant, as well as sunflower hearts. Feeders are especially busy in winter, when flocks gather to feed.

Behavior and voice

Goldfinches are sociable outside the breeding season. In fall and winter they travel in flocks, sometimes of dozens of birds, and often mix with pine siskins, common redpolls and other finches. Within a flock, birds sort out a pecking order through threat displays, such as raising the wings, pointing the bill at a rival or chasing it.

Their flight is a good field mark. A goldfinch flies in a bouncy, roller-coaster path: a few quick wingbeats lift the bird, then it folds its wings and drops in an arc before flapping again. It often calls on each rise, a cheerful “per-chic-o-ree” or “po-ta-to-chip”, which is one of the easiest bird calls in North America to learn.

The song of the male is a long, lively series of twitters, warbles and trills. Males sing from treetops and wires in late spring and summer, and also during display flights over their territory.

Reproduction and life cycle

The American goldfinch has one of the latest breeding seasons of any North American bird. Pairs form in spring, but most nests are not started until late June to late July, and some females are still incubating in September. The timing matches the late-summer peak of seeds, especially thistles, and the soft plant down that lines the nest. Find out more in why goldfinches nest so late.

The female builds the nest alone in about six days, usually in the fork of a shrub or small tree, a few meters above the ground. It is a compact cup of plant fibers and bark strips, bound with spider silk and caterpillar silk and lined with thistle, milkweed or cattail down. It is woven so tightly that it can hold water.

She lays usually 4–6 pale bluish-white eggs and incubates them alone for about 12–14 days, while the male feeds her. The chicks hatch naked and helpless. Both parents feed them a paste of partly digested seeds, and the young leave the nest at about 11–17 days old. The male keeps feeding the fledglings for up to three weeks. Most pairs raise one brood a year, though some raise two where the season is long.

How long do American goldfinches live?

Like most small songbirds, American goldfinches have short average lives in the wild, usually only a few years. The oldest known bird, recorded through bird banding, was about 10 years and 5 months old.

How to identify an American goldfinch

Several small yellow birds share the American goldfinch’s range, so a few details help:

• Lesser goldfinch (Spinus psaltria): a smaller relative of the West and Southwest. Males have a greenish or black back and yellow underparts, not the all-yellow body of a summer American goldfinch.
• Yellow warbler: also bright yellow in summer, but with a thin, pointed insect-eating bill, no black cap and yellow, not black, wings.
• Pine siskin: a close relative that often joins winter goldfinch flocks. It is brown and heavily streaked, with only small flashes of yellow in the wings and tail.
• Evening grosbeak: much larger and heavier-billed, with a dark head and big white wing patches.

In winter, the best clues to a dull goldfinch are its small conical bill, plain unstreaked body, dark wings with two pale bars and its bouncing flight with “po-ta-to-chip” calls. Goldfinches are easiest to see at feeders from late fall to spring and in weedy fields full of thistles and coneflowers from midsummer onward.

Predators and threats

Adult goldfinches are caught by hawks, such as sharp-shinned hawks and Cooper’s hawks, and by domestic cats. Eggs and nestlings are taken by snakes, weasels, squirrels and blue jays. Goldfinches do not fight off predators; they rely on alarm calls and quick flight.

The brown-headed cowbird sometimes lays its eggs in goldfinch nests, but the cowbird chicks rarely survive because the goldfinch’s seed diet does not give them enough protein. Other risks include window collisions, cars, pesticide and herbicide use that removes weedy seed plants, and disease at crowded feeders.

Conservation status

The IUCN lists the American goldfinch as Least Concern. It has a huge range of about 7.9 million km² (3.1 million sq mi) and an estimated 42–47 million mature birds. The IUCN considers the population trend to be decreasing, but the species remains common and widespread.

Unlike many forest birds, the American goldfinch has generally gained from human activity. Clearing forests created the open, weedy habitats it prefers, and bird feeders help it survive the winter in many areas.

Myths and facts

Myth: goldfinches eat “thistle seed” at feeders. The small black seed sold for finches is nyjer, from an African and Asian plant called Guizotia abyssinica, not from thistles. Goldfinches do eat real thistle seeds in the wild.

Myth: dull winter goldfinches are a different bird. The olive-brown birds at winter feeders are the same species. They have simply molted out of their bright breeding plumage.

Fact: goldfinches are not related to the European goldfinch. The European goldfinch has a red face and is placed in a different genus, Carduelis.

Relationship with people

The American goldfinch is one of the most popular backyard birds in North America, easy to attract with seed feeders and gardens full of coneflowers, sunflowers, cosmos and other plants that are left to go to seed.

It is the state bird of Iowa, New Jersey and Washington; see the full list of US state birds. Washington schoolchildren chose it in 1951. Iowa and New Jersey call it the eastern goldfinch, while Washington uses the name willow goldfinch for its western subspecies.