THE GOLDFINCH.
(Fringilla carduelis, or Carduelis elegans.)
This bird is also called the Thistlefinch, from his fondness for the seeds of that plant. He is very beautiful, his plumage being elegantly diversified, his form small, but pleasing, and his voice not loud, but sweet. He is easily tamed, and often exhibited as a captive, with a chain round his body, drawing up with trouble, but yet with amazing dexterity, two small buckets, alternately, one containing his meat, the other his drink. If he is old when caught, the Goldfinch, after a few weeks, if well attended to, and gently treated, becomes as familiar as if he had been brought up by the hand of his keeper. Some have been taught to fire a small piece of artillery, and go through the drilling exercise, to the great astonishment of the spectators; but the cruel and severe treatment that animals undergo, when taught performances altogether contrary to their nature, should prevent us from encouraging such exhibitions.
This bird, as if conscious of the beauty of his plumage, likes to view himself in a glass, which is sometimes fixed for this purpose in the back of the cage. The art with which it composes and builds its nest is really worthy of admiration; it is generally interwoven with moss, small twigs, horsehair, and other pliant materials; the inside stuffed most carefully with fine down, and tufts of cotton grass. There the female deposits five or six eggs, which are whitish, marked at their upper end with purple dots.
“The Goldfinch weaves, with willow down inlaid,
And cannach tufts, his wonderful abode;
And oft suspended at the limber end
Of plane-tree spray, among the broad-leaved shoots,
The tiny hammock swings to every gale.
Sometimes in closest thickets ’tis concealed;
Sometimes in hedge luxuriant, where the brier,
The bramble, and the plum-tree branch
Warp through the thorn, surmounted by the flowers
Of climbing vetch, and honeysuckle wild.”
Grahame.
The following lines were written by Cowper on a Goldfinch starved to death in his cage. The Goldfinch speaks:—