From the greening-up lilac and the blooming forsythia, a steady chatter of goldfinches, their own plumage now turned from green to yellow.
American goldfinch
November 29, 2012
The sun rising through the trees off to the southeast seems so much less ambitious than last night’s moon. Goldfinches’ desultory chirps.
August 29, 2012
Around the side of the house, a male goldfinch gorges on spicebush berries—silent for once, as if unwilling to share his find.
August 12, 2012
Even hanging upside-down from a Canada thistle and stuffing her beak with thistledown, the goldfinch never stops chittering.
July 15, 2012
Ten percent of the tulip tree’s leaves have turned yellow in response to the drought. Goldfinches pass through like a yellow wind.
April 14, 2012
Half molted now, a patchwork of yellow and green, the goldfinch goes twittering past the crabapple’s half-open blooms.
March 8, 2012
Warmth without shadows, the gossip of goldfinches like a single bright thread. The rabbit doesn’t chance a dash across the yard.
December 4, 2011
The sound of an altercation among the goldfinches—like a dozen jazz soloists playing at once. The only cloud in the sky finds the sun.
November 22, 2011
Fog. High in a skeletal birch, the silhouettes of ten goldfinches are almost the right size for leaves, moving in their own slow wind.
August 17, 2011
A male and female goldfinch glean seeds from a tall bull thistle. She eats in silence while he in his loud yellow suit chatters on and on.
July 10, 2011
Goldfinches twitter in the tops of the locusts at sunrise, bright as beacons. A yellow hoverfly watches me from four inches away.
July 3, 2011
Goldfinch in the garden: a coneflower stem breaks under his weight and he moves to another, probing the dark centers for a hint of seed.
April 13, 2011
Incessant rain. A chitter of goldfinches halfway through their molt: part green, part yellow, like spicebush or forsythia in reverse.
December 5, 2010
That first snow still cloaks the frozen earth. When the wind dies, I can hear the 75 finches at my parents’ birdfeeder, a twittering bedlam.