EUROPEAN GOLDFINCH 385 



is no record of their presence in the New York area up to the time of 

 the Hoboken introduction in 1878. 



Serious attempts were made to naturalize the European goldfinch 

 in St. Louis in 1870, in Cincinnati around 1872, at Hoboken, N.J., 

 in 1878, in eastern Massachusetts around 1880, and in Cuba in 1886. 

 Though a female with her nest and five eggs was collected in eastern 

 Massachusetts in 1890, the only consistently successful breeding 

 records in this country have stemmed from the Hoboken introduction 

 of 1878. 



The following year some of these birds appeared in Central Park, 

 New York City, where they bred fairly regularly for the next several 

 decades. E. T. Adney (1886) briefly describes their nesting during 

 this period. Elon H. Eaton (1914) writes that "In the spring of 1900 

 I noticed several pairs that were endeavoring to build their nests in 

 Central Park, and in the country about Kings Bridge and Spuyten 

 Duyvil, in New York City." In his list of permanent residents of 

 Central Park, Charles H. Kogers (1903) reports as many as 15 indi- 

 viduals during the winter of 1901-02. Though Clmton G. Abbott 

 (1902) reported to the Linnaean Society the presence in January of 

 that year of fully 50 European goldfinches on the grounds of Columbia 

 University at 116th Street, New York City, the birds disappeared 

 from Central Park shortly after the turn of the century, and 20 years 

 later Griscom (1923) reports the species had "virtually disappeared" 

 from New York City. 



Birds from the Central Park nucleus started early to radiate out 

 into the nearby suburbs. Eaton (1914) writes of three individuals seen 

 at Long Island City in the winter of 1889, and of "many" that A. K. 

 Fisher observed at Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., the winter of 1891, includ- 

 ing several found dead there in the snow. John T. Nichols (1936) 

 reports from his journal the following records for the Englewood, 

 N.J., region: "A flock of about eight on January 28, 1912; about six 

 at Leonia on February 16, 1913; one on February 21, 1915; seven, one 

 in full song, in a heavy wet snowstorm on March 6 ; a flock of about 

 five at CoytesvUle on March 13 with the remark 'They seem to be 

 unusually common in the Englewood region this year', and the species 

 singing on March 23, 1915." Nichols moved to Garden City, Long 

 Island, in 1916 where he also found the European goldfinches present 

 and later observed several nestings. 



Since the early 1900's a number of scattered sight records have been 

 reported from the New York area and a few, as detailed later, else- 

 where in North America, most if not all of these apparently based on 

 escaped captive birds. The only population to maintain itself con- 

 sistently, however, was the colony that found suitable smroundings 

 on the south shore of Long Island, within a large triangle extending 



