Coastal Journal: Golden opportunity to see beautiful finches

This has been a goldfinch year. Winter and summer, it seems, from what you tell me, more of the yellow beauties are in the area.

I know I had more this winter in my yard than I usually do. This summer, I am pretty sure there are several nesting pairs in the neighborhood because I see them daily on my feeders and my neighbors' feeders.

In years past, we have only had one nesting pair that I could tell.

You can mark the seasons by goldfinches, because they change in and out of breeding colors in fall, winter and spring.

And they nest now, in the dog days of summer when most bird parents are wiping their brows and resting after raising a batch of youngsters in late spring.

Though many birds seemed to nest later than usual this year, goldfinches are always late. Biologists think it is because the birds are true seed-aters.

They rarely depend on insects for food. They must nest when flowers have gone to seed naturally so they will have a handy source for their young.

Goldfinches have thick conical bills like many seed-eaters, and they use their big strong beaks to crack open tough seeds. You are apt to see goldfinches pecking seeds out of your purple coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, sunflowers, herbs and the like.

They need a lot of seeds to feed a nest full of youngsters, so think of the goldfinches the next time you work in the garden and don't deadhead all your flowers.

Goldfinches are sometimes called wild canaries because in spring the dusky olive-brown males turn brilliant yellow getting ready for breeding season. The females are a pale picture of the males all year, but they, too, get a yellow cast in spring and summer.

Both have unmistakable black wing bars. In fall, males and females molt once again and lose their brilliance until spring rolls around.

The goldfinches' Latin name, "Carduelis tristis," says a lot about this little bird. "Carduelis" refers to thistle, which goes to seed in late summer and is one of the bird's favorites. It is said they also like to line their nests with thistle down.

"Tristis" is for "sad." Some say its sweet high call is a plaintive one.

In any case, any time I surprise a goldfinch on my thistle feeder, it flies off in an undulating flight, calling its sweet-sounding notes as it flies. This year I can hear that call 'round the neighborhood and I think the babies are joining in.

A thistle feeder - a plastic one or a thistle sock - is a great addition to your yard. In summer goldfinches feed as individuals or pairs.

In winter they flock up and you can watch as they turn from green to gold, a sure harbinger of spring.

READERS' CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

Housing crisis  Ron Lee  in Cypress Point needs help with his purple martin house. For years, he has had problems with starlings taking over the house and chasing the martins away. He got a new house last year and it didn’t help. Lee keeps the house clean, takes it down for the winter and tries to do all the right things. Does anyone have any suggestions for Lee?

Broken lease  Mary Lee Harris  discovered a squirrel’s nest down in a hole among the geraniums in an upstairs window box at her North End home. Once she was discovered, the mama squirrel moved her babies, and Harris never saw them again.

Handsome snake sighting  Biking through First Landing State Park, Brian Bremenstul saw a large 6-foot snake that had coiled itself around a rotten tree stump, catching some rays filtering through the canopy. It was black with distinctive orange bands on the belly. A search showed it is an eastern mud snake and although common, they are not readily seen because of being burrowers.

Another hawk sighting  Nancy Chandler , principal at Kempsville Elementary School, saw a brazenhawk perched on a bench in the school’s outdoor learning center recently. “It didn’t budge as I drove out of the lot,” Chandler said.

Night heron  Tim Solanic  sighted a black-crowned night heron at Pleasure House Point. The bird was preening and sometimes “barking,” Solanic said. The call has been described as sounding like a harsh “wok, wok, wok.” The Cornell Lab of Ornithology includes birdcalls in its  online information on individual birds at www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/ .

Photos ops  Roy Widgeon  sent beautiful close-up photos of a hover fly he took at Hilltop on his lunch hour and a dragonfly on the tip of a branch at his home in Indian Lakes. 

- Matthew Sargent  sent photos of a red-tailed hawk taken by his colleague Ronica Malbon  in the parking lot of their office on Lynnhaven Parkway. The hawk was walking around  grooming itself on the hood of a car, and looking at its reflection in the windshield.

-Dianne McClernon  photographed a humongous dead dragonfly that she found in Little Neck. This giant that she identified as a southern hawker was almost 4 inches long.

- Renelle Maddrey  sent the sweetest pictures of baby wrens just after they fledged in her Kings Grant yard. The babies “clung to the brick and screened porch, were in and out of the magnolia bush, and hovered in and around the window sills. Naturally, one of them proceeded to get snagged by a spider web in my nice clean windows .”

-Linda VanRysdam  sent shots of two young doves that emerged from a nest on a ladder that was hanging on the fence in her  Rosemont Forest South yard.

-Brenda Winer  photographed a Cooper’s hawk perched on the birdbath in their Kings Grant yard.The hawk probably was the same one that captured a mourning dove in their yard a few weeks earlier, Harold Winer said.

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