They arrive in the Coastal Carolina Regions around Thanksgiving and typically exhaust natural food sources before heading to the feeders. You will usually start seeing several Goldfinches at your feeder around January of February. I think this greatly depends on natural food sources and your region but here in Charleston this seems to generally be the case.
Goldfinches eat thistle, niger, or nyger (all three are the same). This seed is a tiny black seed that usually requires a special "thistle feeder". What alot of people don't know about this seed is that it goes bad very quickly. It is important that you change your thistle seed out after 2 weeks if it has gotten wet and you are not having much bird activity to the feeder. Thistle seed can get a very fine mold on it that is hard for us to see but the Goldfinches will pass your feeder up if your seed is contaminated with it.
Some advice for keeping you seed fresh is to only fill your feeder about 1/3 of the way until you start getting Goldfinches. This way, if you have to dump out your seed to replace it with fresh seed you will not be wasting an enitre feeder full. Purchasing a higher quality feeder or a weather guard for your feeder may also help keep your thistle seed fresh.
Here is a picture of a Goldfinch I saw feeding in Kentucky over the summer. Keep in mind that Goldfinches are more of an olive, brown color when they first arrive in the coast of the Carolinas.
Male Goldfinches can be indentified from other birds because of their vibrant yellow color (during spring and summer months), the black patch on their head, black tail, and distinctive black wings with white wing bars.
The female Goldfinch is less vibrant, and more olive in color. They have no black forehead, have brown wings, and a white rump.
For more information on Goldfinch visit these links:
I would love to hear from you if you have an interesting Goldfinch story or picture you would like to share! E-mail me at blissfulshutter@yahoo.com!
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