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American Goldfinch
Spinus tristis

Featured image credit: “American goldfinch” by ibm4381 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

To hear songs, learn identification information, migratory patterns, and some fun facts, check out the American Goldfinch page offered by one of my favorite resources: the Cornell Lab of Ornithology »

This was the first bird that I ever fell in love with when I was a girl (the second was a Chickadee). My family was driving in West Virginia where we would go in the summer and my grandfather saw something and pulled over on the side of the road. He got out, and walked around the car, scooped something up and in his cupped hands showed me a male Goldfinch. It must have been stunned or injured. I was in LOVE! (I already was enamoured with yellow baby chicks so I’m sure that fed into my obsession). I can’t remember what happened to that bird, but it was the closest I had ever been to a wild bird in my life.

All text and photos copyright © 2022 Middle Way Nature Reserve, unless noted.
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