… will soon be gold! Come May, the male American goldfinches now frequenting your feeders will shed their drab green-yellow wardrobe in exchange for bright gold and black feathers. It’s spring, and male birds need to woo their lady friends with handsome, eye-catching colors.
Now a drab gray, the female goldfinches will molt into a brighter — albeit less brilliant — gold for spring and summer.
A female goldfinch came into the care of VINS staff at the end of February. In the photo, you can just barely make out this little golden nugget held by a staff member for her weekly weigh-in.
The bird was initially found in a woman’s yard unable to fly, and we suspect the goldfinch flew into a window. We examined the bird and found a fracture in her swollen left wing.
As you can imagine, a goldfinch’s bones are very small and thin. To wrap a broken wing on such a bird, we wrap the injured wing to their body in a “body wrap.” That secures the bones and allows them to grow back together, and prevents us from handling the wing’s wee bones too much.
Less than a month later, this little bird is flying like a champ in our outdoor songbird aviary. She is ready to go back to her home in the wild!
Great work well done,I'm pleased to see many of your injured Birds are returned to the wild.
john.