By Mary Reid Barrow

A bright yellow goldfinch at the feeder lit up a recent dismal rainy day as if the sun were shining brightly.

Male goldfinches are in their best yellow finery this time of year. Golden yellow with black heads and wings, the males also are foot loose and fancy free, out to impress the ladies.

Most other bird species these days are toiling away at feeding and caring for young in the nest or keeping up with toddler babies hopping around and getting into trouble.

But there’s no June bride tradition or mating finery to worry about among the drab females. They remain pale yellowish green with black wings year round. Goldfinch wait to mate in late June or July when some flowers have begun to go to seed.

They nest late in the year because they are about the only vegetarians in the bird world. Seeds supplemented by berries is the goldfinch diet. Were they to have a nest full of babies in spring, there would not be enough seeds to feed those hungry mouths.

Other baby birds thrive on insects, but goldfinch babies don’t eat insects at all. The difference is so stark, according to All About Birds, the great Cornell University website, that if a mother cowbird lays one of her eggs in a goldfinch nest, the baby cowbird dies within a few days. It just cannot survive on seeds.

Right now, you might see goldfinches, male and female alike, still out partying, checking out the neighborhood feeder bars. The birds are hard to photograph. They take off from my feeder, filled with Wild Birds Unlimited’s finch mix, in a nano second if they see or hear me. They fly away undulating up and down, tweeting their high pitched calls.

I wish I had a better photo than the one at the top which is years old. It is good if for nothing else than to point out the difference between showy males and drab females. Just to confuse matters a little, first year males—bright yellow without a black head—are also among the flocks this time of year.

Later in summer when the babies are out of the nest, you again will see the goldfinches grouped up to feed, this time more on the ground under the flowers where seeds have fallen.

You may not even know they are there until you get close. Suddenly goldfinches, young and old, burst from under the plants and fly off twittering!

Often goldfinches stay around all year to decorate your feeders, but the males are never prettier than they are now in mating season.

In the video above, taken by Dana Gauthier, a male and female pair of goldfinches look for seeds in coreopsis flowers this morning at the LRNow office.