Goldfinch: Not an insult, but a compliment! “Luxury sparrows” that are perfect in everything (9 photos)

- Eh, hear, goldfinch!?

Having heard such a greeting, do not rush to turn around or give up. Maybe it was an avid ornithologist who appreciated your chic clothes or decided in this way to emphasize the melodicity of the song that you whistled throughout Ivanovskaya. Yes, yes, and our latitudes have their own birds of paradise and fashion icons. Well, like icons - icons, considering the weight of only 20 grams.





The common, or black, goldfinch can be found not only in the gateways: the pocket fashionista arranges catwalks in all forests and village courtyards from Portugal and North Africa to Central Kazakhstan. True, from the northern latitudes the bird migrates to the South once a year. Why freeze when you don't have to freeze?



Goldfinches do not always fly away for the winter. In places where winters are warm enough, they remain in their familiar places. Typically, these are the southern and western regions of Eurasia.

If you thought a 12-centimeter-long tuft of feathers was hard to spot on the runway, take a look at his colorful outfit. The costume in acid shades of the birds is unisex, so not even every ornithologist can immediately distinguish boys from girls.





After a tiring parade, the bird goes hungry. A full-size feathered militia of several dozen birds is being prepared to search for food. And here the pampered model surprises with her professionalism and workaholism: in search of birch or thistle seeds, she can even hang upside down on a branch, and she looks for larvae more actively than Batman looks for a detonator. Moreover, these are not just any larvae, but harmful field larvae, so the goldfinch is also an orderly for farmland: with this, pesticides are not needed in the fields.



He looks like a sweetie, and a hard worker, and an orderly. Damn goldfinch! Maybe you still sing well and say rainbows? Well, he was not convicted of the second, but he was also fine with the first. Our bird prodigy can produce up to twenty different trills. In terms of the beauty of the serenade, their voices are a little less than a nightingale, but even so they are similar to the sounds of angels kissing, for which they are known among people as a good replacement for a radio tape recorder.



Breeders of domestic goldfinches write that chicks hatched in captivity become very sociable and friendly towards humans (consider it +1 dog in the house). If you take good care of the bird, it will delight the whole family with its trills for up to 20 years.



For its friendliness and powerful vocals, people of many cultures and religions revered the bird and depicted it in paintings and icons: among pagan tribes, the goldfinch symbolized the human soul, among Italians of the Renaissance - love and virtue, and among medieval Christians of central Europe - salvation, cleansing from sins and fertility .



By the way, everything is fine with goldfinches’ fertility. The couple enjoys each other all spring, and at the end of May our luxury sparrows mate. At the same time, the couple builds a bowl-shaped house on a tree, where the female lays 4-6 eggs.



After just two weeks of incubation, the chicks hatch. For another two weeks, the parents will feed their larvae with larvae, and then it’s time for the first flight. For about 6 days, the fledglings will adjust their aerodynamics without flying far from the nest. And there you can already enjoy free aeronautics. Sometimes during the season a couple can even manage to put two generations on the wing.



My rating for the goldfinch is 10 colored feathers out of 10. He is a Swede, a reaper, and a player on the pipe, he is also useful, like glycine, and a good parent, like Arthur and Molly Weasley. Why not be friends with someone like that?