Conspicuously Yellow and Orange 



each undulation with a cluster of notes, sweet and clear, that 

 come floating downward from the blue ether, where the birds 

 seem to bound along exultant in their motion and song alike. 



In the spring the plumage of the goldfinch, which has been 

 drab and brown through the winter months, is moulted or shed — 

 a change that transforms the bird from a sombre Puritan into the 

 gayest of cavaliers, and seems to wonderfully exalt his spirits. 

 He bursts into a wild, sweet, incoherent melody that might be 

 the outpouring from two or three throats at once instead of one, 

 expressing his rapture somewhat after the manner of the canary, 

 although his song lacks the variety and the finish of his caged 

 namesake. What tone of sadness in his music the man found 

 who applied the adjective iristis to his scientific name it is diffi- 

 cult to imagine when listening to the notes that come bubbling 

 up from the bird's happy heart. 



With plumage so lovely and song so delicious and dreamy, 

 it is small wonder that numbers of our goldfinches are caught and 

 caged, however inferior their song may be to the European species 

 recently introduced into this country. Heard in Central Park, 

 New York, where they were set at liberty, the European gold- 

 finches seemed to sing with more abandon, perhaps, but with no 

 more sweetness than their American cousins. The song remains 

 at its best all through the summer months, for the bird is a long 

 wooer. It is nearly July before he mates, and not until the tardy 

 cedar birds are house-building in the orchard do the happy pair 

 begin to carry grass, moss, and plant-down to a crotch of some 

 tall tree convenient to a field of such wild flowers as will furnish 

 food to a growing f;imily. Doubtless the birds wait for this food 

 to be in proper condition before they undertake parental duties at 

 all — the most plausible excuse for their late nesting. The cares 

 evolving from four to six pale-blue eggs will suffice to quiet the 

 father's song for the winter by the first of September, and fade all 

 the glory out of his shining coat. As pretty a sight as any garden 

 offers is when a family of goldfinches alights on the top of a sun- 

 flower to feast upon the oily seeds— a perfect harmony of brown 

 and gold. 



191 



