Way back in the 20th century, in the spring of 1990, I was finishing up my bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology. On my list of classes for my final semester was Zoology 544 — Ornithology. I had somehow managed to get through most of my college classes without learning much of anything about birds other than what I already knew from books. Little did I know how much of an impact this class would have on the rest of my life.
Birds had already been fascinating to me, but I hadn’t been introduced to them by anyone who actually knew much about them. I can remember the days preceding the Christmases of my boyhood when I would peruse the few old bird books that my mother had in search of paintings that I could copy. I used to make a lot of the presents I would give to people. As a teenager, I would paint birds onto glass ornaments so people could have birds in their Christmas trees.
Anyway, I remember looking through these books and marveling at the huge diversity of birds that live in North America. Where, I used to wonder, were all of these birds hiding? The answer to that question became abundantly clear when I started my ornithology class: the birds were often hiding in plain sight. They were there, but you had to be able to find them and the best way to find birds was to listen for them. This is the skill that made me fall in love with birds. Hearing their songs and then looking for the birds singing the songs opened up the “secret” world of birds to me.
I had signed up for ornithology in the spring semester because it is during the spring that the birds really sing. All of the students were provided with cassette tapes with the songs of many species of local birds, and we were expected to study these tapes and be able to identify them in an upcoming exam. Whenever we had to identify a species, we had to use its full common name. I marveled at how many of the species had names that started with “American.” American robin, American tree sparrow and American crow are just a few examples.
Well, it turns out that our British ancestors established many bird names before America was “discovered.” They have a robin, we have an American robin. They have a tree sparrow, we have an American tree sparrow. The same is true with another beautiful species of bird, the goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis). We have an American goldfinch that is largely yellow (at least with the males), but the goldfinch is quite a different bird and I was lucky enough to see some of these beautiful birds when I visited Sicily this summer.
About the same size as its American cousin, the goldfinch is a beautiful bird with a red mask that covers the front portion of the face, bold patches of black and white feathers that decorate the rest of the head, and black wings with bright yellow patches that run through the middle of the primary wing feathers. Unlike the American goldfinch, the plumage patterns of the European goldfinch are almost identical between adult males and females. The only real difference is in the extent of the red feathers of the male, which extend slightly behind the eye.
The range of the goldfinch extends eastward through Europe and into Kazakhstan and Russia. There is a fairly “flat” northern edge to the species’ summer range, which just manages to include southernmost Sweden, but in the winter the birds retreat to Europe and the Middle East. Like their American counterparts, goldfinches are granivorous, which means that they prefer seeds. However, they will include insects in the diets of their chicks when feeding them in the nest. Insects are the uberfood of almost all baby birds because of the protein they contain.
One final bit of interesting trivia, the scientific names. The European goldfinch has the same genus and species name — Carduelis — which is Latin for “goldfinch.” This name probably comes from the Latin word “carduus,” which means “thistle” — the favorite food of goldfinches. Here in America we used to have the American goldfinch named Carduelis tristis, which meant the “sad goldfinch.” However, in recent years the American goldfinch’s genus name has been changed to “Spinus,” from the ancient Greek word “spinos,” which refers to a bird that no one seems to be able to identify any longer. Thus, the new scientific name for the American goldfinch is the “sad unknown bird,” which I myself find sad.
A superficial resemblance between species on two different continents led to the naming of the new species, but now we know that they are not related in a particularly close way. However, nothing can take away from the beauty of either bird. Since I live with American goldfinches I have to say that I have a much stronger attachment to them. I love their songs and I love the appearance of their fledglings late in the summertime. Seeing birds on other continents is nice, but I’ll take “my” birds here at home any day.
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 25 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Nature Conservancy and Massachusetts State Parks, and he currently teaches high school biology and physics. For more in formation, visit his website at speakingofnature.com, or head over to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.