Identifier: birdneighbors00blan (find matches)
Title: Bird neighbors. An introductory acquaintance with one hundred and fifty birds commonly found in the gardens, meadows, and woods about our homes
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Blanchan, Neltje, 1865-1918
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: New York : Grosset & Dunlap

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to the Fur Countries andwestward to the Columbia River and California. Commonthroughout its range. Migrations—May. October. Common summer resident, fre-quently seen throughout the winter as well. An old field, overgrown with thistles and tall, stalky wildflowers, is the paradise of the goldfinches, summer or winter.Here they congregate in happy companies while the sunshineand goldenrod are as bright as their feathers, and cling to theswaying, slender stems that furnish an abundant harvest, daintilylunching upon the fluffy seeds of thistle blossoms, pecking at themullein-stalks, and swinging airily among the asters and Michael-mas daisies ; or, when snow covers the same field with a glis-tening crust, above which the brown stalks offer only a meagredinner, the same birds, now sombrely clad in winter feathers,cling to the swaying stems with cheerful fortitude. At your approach, the busy company rises on the wing, andwith peculiar, wavy flight rise and fall through the air, marking 190
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AMERICAN GOLDFINCH Conspicuously Yellow and Orange each undulation with a cluster of notes, sweet and clear, thatcome floating downward from the blue ether, where the birdsseem to bound along exultant in their motion and song alike. In the spring the plumage of the goldfinch, which has beendrab and brown through the winter months, is moulted or shed—a change that transforms the bird from a sombre Puritan into thegayest of cavaliers, and seems to wonderfully exalt his spirits.He bursts into a wild, sweet, incoherent melody that might bethe outpouring from two or three throats at once instead of one,expressing his rapture somewhat after the manner of the canary,although his song lacks the variety and the finish of his cagednamesake. What tone of sadness in his music the man foundwho applied the adjective tristis to his scientific name it is diffi-cult to imagine when listening to the notes that come bubblingup from the birds happy heart. With plumage so lovely and song so delicious an

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