Seeing a goldfinch
Seeing a goldfinch, the small yellow bird at the thistle feeder, introduces you to one of the latest nesters in North America. It waits until midsummer, when thistle down is ready, and that kind of planning is worth borrowing for big jobs.
What it may mean
By the time most songbirds have raised their first broods, the American goldfinch has barely started. It waits for July or even August, when thistles and milkweed go to seed, then lines its nest with their soft down and feeds its young on seeds alone. To a neighbor watching the robins, the goldfinch looks late. In its own calendar it is right on time, because it has matched its biggest job to the season that supplies it. Few of us schedule our own heavy jobs that carefully. The move lands in the busiest month at work, and the big project starts the week the helpers are away. A bright male swinging on a seed head shows the other way of planning: ask first when the materials, the help and the energy will be plentiful, and set the date around that.
Depending on how you saw it
A dull olive goldfinch in winter
In fall, goldfinches molt into a drab olive-brown, and people often think they have left. The same birds keep visiting feeders all winter, only duller in color. Whose plainer winter self do you overlook while waiting for the bright one?
Hanging upside down on a seed head
Goldfinches cling to swaying thistles, coneflowers and sunflowers at odd angles to pull out the seeds, sometimes upside down. A light body makes those awkward positions easy. Which task would be simpler if you carried less into it?
On Valentine's Day
Old Valentine's Day lore, gathered in 1903, called it a fine omen to meet a goldfinch or any yellow bird on that day, and said a girl who saw a goldfinch first would marry a millionaire. Which small sight still lifts your day, even if you do not believe it foretells anything?
A yellow bird that is not a goldfinch
Not every small yellow bird is a goldfinch: yellow warblers, lesser goldfinches and, in Europe, yellowhammers all wear the color. A black cap and black wings with white bars mark a male American goldfinch. Which bright thing in your week turned out to be something other than you first assumed?
Why it happens in nature
American goldfinches eat almost nothing but seeds, so they nest late, in midsummer, when thistle, milkweed and other plants supply both seeds for the young and soft down to line the nest. Males molt into bright yellow each spring and into olive-brown each fall. Their bouncing, roller-coaster flight and twittering call make them easy to spot.
To reflect on
Which big job of yours would go easier if you scheduled it for the season that supplies what it needs?