384 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part i 



CARDUELIS CARDUELIS 



European Goldfinch 



PLATE 21 



Contributed by John Jackson Elliott 



Habits 



In addition to the small colony that managed to perpetuate itself 

 during the past half century on southwestern Long Island, N.Y., the 

 European goldfinch is admitted to the American list on the basis of its 

 successful establishment in Bermuda. The 1957 A.O.U. Check-List 

 refers all these bu'ds to the British race Carduelis carduelis briitanica, 

 but as Austin (1963) has recently pointed out, the subspecific status of 

 the former Long Island popidation is conjectural, and the Bermuda 

 population today is unquestionably C. c. parva, the race of Madeu'a, 

 the Azores, and the Canary Islands. Bermuda was first colonized by 

 goldfinches that escaped from a British ship in the harbor in 1893, but 

 the stock there now has apparently descended from birds brought sub- 

 sequently from their home islands by the large element of Azorians 

 resident in Bermuda. The stock released in the New York City area 

 in the latter half of the 19th century also came from the British Isles, 

 but since then it doubtless received admixtures of the nominate race of 

 central Europe, to which most cage bird stock imported into this 

 country in the 20th century is assignable. 



The number of times and places this weU known Old World bird has 

 been introduced into North America is uncertain. Long a popular 

 cage bird in Eiu'ope and the British Isles, captive goldfinches may well 

 have been brought here by homesick Europeans as early as the 18th 

 century, though we have no certain records of importations before the 

 mid-1 9th century. Since then the commercial trade has been fairly 

 steady. The species is still kept and raised by cage bird fanciers both 

 here and abroad, and can be bought today in many pet shops through- 

 out this country. 



The earliest mention of this species in America (cf . Robert Cushman 

 Murphy, 1945) is in a rare volume entitled "Green-Wood Cemetery, 

 a History of the Institution from 1838 to 1864" by Nehemiah Cleave- 

 land, published in New York in 1866. Green-Wood Cemetery, in 

 Brooklyn on the extreme western end of Long Island, is famous as the 

 site of the first successful introduction of the house sparrow to this 

 country in the winter and spring of 1852-53. Evidence on pages 73 

 and 134 of this rare history shows that as well as the house sparrows, 

 some 48 European goldfinches and a number of other British birds 

 were released in the cemetery late in 1852. According to Cleaveland 

 the experiment was a failure, because all the birds except the house 

 sparrows disappeared. If any of these goldfinches did survive, there 



