American Goldfinch

There is a story around this bird, and it is not a pleasant one. If you're a diehard birder and one that doesn't accept the circle of life, you might want to stop reading here. I don't want angry emails about my irresponsibility for letting my cat outside.

So, last fall one of my cats went missing (Moonpie). I think this really upset my other cat, Bandit, because for the 11 days Moonpie was gone Bandit brought me more "presents" than he ever has in all the time I've had him. I think we were gifted with a squirrel, a chipmunk, and unfortunately 2 or 3 American Goldfinches over that 11 day period. I don't know if he was just upset that Moonpie was missing and that made him want to hunt or if he's always been hunting like that but now he knew that *I* was upset and wanted to bring me gifts to make me feel better (as IF!!). I don't know. All I know is that once Moonpie was found (thankfully! he spent 11 miserable days in someone's crawlspace) the killing stopped, or at least the gifts did. He hasn't brought anything home in the 4 months since Moonpie was found. Isn't that odd? And, just for the record, Bandit did eat his prey. It was disgusting, yet fascinating.

Anyway, so these pretty little birds. I thought they were Yellow Warblers at the time. I was a new bird watcher and I wasn't great at identifying them yet. Finally, once I saw some on my feeders and got better pictures of them, I realized (and it was confirmed on what bird ) that they were in fact American Goldfinches. They're cute little birds (and apparently slow...just kidding) and just the other day I saw some females for the first time. Here are a couple of pictures of the male and then the female American Goldfinch. May they live long and happy lives.




Happy Birding!