116 BIRDS 



Migrations — ^May. October. Common summer resident, 

 frequently seen throughout the winter as well. 



Have you a garden gay with marigolds, sunflowers, 

 coreopsis, zinnias, cornflowers, and gaillardias.'' If so, every 

 goldfinch in your neighborhood knows it and hastens there 

 to feed on the seeds of these plants as fast as they form, so 

 that you need expect to save few for next spring's planting. 

 But most of us prefer the birds when flower seeds cost only 

 five cents a packet; and some of us confess to planting these 

 very flowers especially to entice goldfinches from the fields. 

 Clinging to the slender, swaying stems, they themselves 

 look so like yellow flowers that you do not suspect how 

 many are feasting in the garden until they are startled into 

 flight. Then away they go, boimding along through the 

 air, now rising, now falling, in long aerial waves peculiar 

 to them alone. You can always tell a goldfinch by its 

 wavy course through the air. Often it accents the rise of 

 each wave as it flies by a ripple of sweet, twittering notes. 

 The yellow warbler is sometimes called a wild canary be- 

 cause he looks Hke a canary; the goldfinch has the same 

 misleading name applied to him because he sings like one. 



But goldfinches by no means depend upon our gardens 

 for their daily fare. An old field overgrown with thistles 

 and tall, stalky wild flowers, is the paradise of the gold- 

 finches, summer or winter. Here they congregate in 

 happy companies while the sunshine and goldenrod are as 

 bright as their feathers, and cling to the swaying, slender 

 stems that furnish an abundant harvest, daintily lunching 

 upon the fluffy seeds of thistle blossoms and wild lettuce, 

 pecking at the mullein-stalks, and swinging airily among 



