The summer bird season is upon us and our back yard has been overrun with goldfinches. There are worse things for the back yard to be overrun with, I’ll admit. Squirrels, for instance. But squirrels don’t count. The world is overrun with squirrels. For the last few summers, we have put fresh thistle socks out for the finches, and quite a few show up, mostly house finches and purple finches. Not so with the goldfinches, but that is not the case this year. This year they showed up in droves. They are beautiful birds with their bright yellow coats, black caps, wings and tails. They are highly territorial. That makes them a lot of fun to watch, because they bicker and fight constantly. The squabbles usually break out at backyard feeders throughout most of the summer, particularly in the breeding season, when males fiercely defend nesting areas.
The yellow goldfinches are a beautiful contrast to the bright reds of the cardinals and blues of the jays and bluebirds. They typically migrate in the fall, with many southern populations staying year-round. The males will lose their bright yellow and black plumage in the winter, with their coats turning brown, causing many people to think the birds have left.
It has been an entertaining summer so far watching all the activity at our backyard feeders. The finches are quarreling, the bluebirds are nesting, the hummers are buzzing, the cardinals are flocking. We’ve seen a couple of rabbits and even have a deer come over the fence occasionally to dine on the hosta. The squirrels are providing comic relief by taking spins on the Yankee Flipper. We even had a good size black rat snake show up for a week or so. The chipmunk population went down measurably.