They are birds which found their food on the waste lands where large thistles used to grow, and with the improvement of these waste lands the thistles have gone, and the Goldfinches with them.
The warm evening light flooded the common, where brown bracken grew like a forest, and goldfinches flitted about among a grove of thistles.
Latest among the singers are the chewinks, the wood pewees, the field sparrows, and, of course, the goldfinchesand the cuckoos.
Goldfinches ride on the billows of the air, now folding their pinions and shooting silently downward into the trough of the sea, then opening their wings and beating their way upwards, singing meanwhile.
The nest is one of the prettiest we have, in an upright crotch, and furnished with a bed of thistledown an inch thick for the baby goldfinches to rest upon.
When the apples bloomed, the goldfinches visited the same trees at least once a day.
Goldfinches eat dock-seed, and if any approach the decoy-bird calls.
Goldfinches go in pairs all the winter and work along the hedges together.
As pretty a sight as any garden offers is when a family of goldfinches alights on the top of a sunflower to feast upon the oily seeds -- a perfect harmony of brown and gold.
With plumage so lovely and song so delicious and dreamy, it is small wonder that numbers of our goldfinches are caught and caged, however inferior their song may be to the European species recently introduced into this country.
Heard in Central Park, New York, where they were set at liberty, the European goldfinches seemed to sing with more abandon, perhaps, but with no more sweetness than their American cousins.
In some parts of England the trade in goldfinches is very considerable.
The hummer flew by to her nest, goldfinches called from the ledge.
The world about the house and orchard was full of melody, for goldfinches were just celebrating their nuptials, and birds have to furnish their own wedding music.
Goldfinches and yellow warblers, vireos and robins, were about; I heard them on all sides, but not one intruded upon her tree or the neighboring sides of the maples.
The goldfinches swept by overhead with a gleam of colour from their wings, coquetting on their way to the apple-trees.
Then I heard one of the goldfinches cry out as if in distress, when the whole flock of them started up in alarm, and, circling around, settled in the tops of the larger trees.
A large number of goldfinches in their fall plumage, together with snowbirds and sparrows, were feeding and chattering in some low bushes back of the barn.
When the sun went down in the west the next night the second nest was done, and it was the last thing at which the Goldfinches looked before tucking their heads under their wings and going to sleep.
He did not want her to speak to anybody else, and yet he could not help her doing so, for Goldfinches always go together in crowds until they have homes of their own, and at this time they were having concerts every morning.
He bathed and sang and preened his feathers and talked about his queer nest and his bright little wife, after the manner of Goldfinches everywhere.
The Goldfinches were there too, but you would never have known the husbands and fathers of the flock, unless you had seen them before in their winter clothing, which is like that worn by the wives and children.
She had seen the Goldfinches fly away, and she was looking for their home.
When the Goldfinches came back, they saw the egg in their nest and called all their neighbors to talk it over.
His friends laughed at him for helping so much about the nest, for, you know, Goldfinches do not often help their wives about home.
Illustration] THE STORY OF THE COW BIRD'S EGG On the edge of the forest next to the meadow, a pair of young Goldfinches were about to begin housekeeping.
Goldfinches and Tree Sparrows are still quite abundant, and there is a flock of fifty or sixty Pine Grosbeaks, mostly in young plumage, in the woods about a mile to the west of us, the first I have seen this winter.
Protests were heard at these words, the goldfinches and sparrows crying out indignantly-- "Ah!
Thus, every autumn there is a migration of goldfinches into Cornwall, many birds appearing in the neighbourhood of Mount's Bay in September and remaining until November.
These goldfinches have a brighter plumage than those which winter in England, and appear to form a body or race distinct from the earlier migrants having their own seasons and perhaps a route of their own.
As pretty a sight as any garden offers is when a family of goldfinches alights on the top of a sunflower to feast upon the oily seeds--a perfect harmony of brown and gold.
Clinging to the slender, swaying stems, the goldfinches themselves look so like yellow flowers that you do not suspect how many are feasting in the garden until they are startled into flight.
Usually not until July, when the early thistles furnish plenty of fluff for nest lining, do pairs of goldfinches withdraw from flocks to begin the serious business of raising a family.
Except the cedar wax wings, the goldfinches are the latest nesters of all our birds.
But goldfinches by no means depend upon our gardens for their daily fare.
And even if he could blot out Guy's prospect, it was impossible not to follow in fancy the goldfinches to their thistle-fields remote and sunny, the goldfinches with their flighted song.
Near the spring the goldfinches are still in full chorus, and just beyond them in the path is a mourning dove.
No; Goldfinches keep up a habit by which you can always tell them, old or young, male or female, in summer or winter.
There must be a great many different-looking birds in this Finch family," said Rap, "if plain Sparrows and yellow Goldfinches both belong to it.
The goldfinches stay with us in lorn flocks and clad in a dull-olive suit throughout the winter.
All the goldfinches of a neighborhood collect together and hold a sort of musical festival.
I have known the goldfinches to keep up this musical and love-making festival through three consecutive days of a cold northeast rain-storm.
This it did regularly, until the goldfinches undertook the work themselves, and rendered the kindness of the canary no longer necessary.
Weeks ago the first migrants started on their southward journey, the more delicate insect-eaters going first, before the goldfinches and other late nesters had half finished housekeeping.
The goldfinchesare also long-distance flyers, not flitters.
It was composed of all the birds I have just named, with flocks of bluebirds and goldfinches thrown in for good measure.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "goldfinches" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
