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In my boyhood, when a troop of us would go, on Thursdays, to try and catch a Goldfinch in the hemp-fields, we used, before covering the twigs with glue, to grease our fingers with a few drops of oil, lest we should get them caught in the sticky matter. Does the Epeira know the secret of fatty substances? Let us try. I rub my exploring straw with slightly oiled paper.
When one sees the charming purple finch and summer yellow-bird, nesting and singing in the streets of Denver, and the bewitching Arkansas goldfinch and the beautiful Western bluebird perfectly at home in Colorado Springs, he is reminded of what might be in the Eastern cities, if only the human race had not interfered with Nature's distribution of her feathered families.
His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker cage: this was the chemist. "Artemise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens!
I'll venture to say that he has been having such a good time that he hasn't even yet thought of building a nest, and here half the people of the Old Orchard have grown families. I've a nest and eggs myself, but that madcap is just roaming about having a good time. Isn't that so, Chicoree?" "Isn't what so?" demanded Chicoree the Goldfinch, perching very near to where Linnet was sitting.
"But my sailing was largely sailing," he said. "It's different under steam." "But we have been nearly three days in a turquoise calm, and I have watched you. A goldfinch would pine away on the nourishment you have taken! How do you manage to live?" "You see how well I am," he said.
On the contrary, it was decidedly finchlike, so much so that some of the notes, taken by themselves, would have been ascribed without hesitation to the goldfinch or the pine finch, had I heard them in New England; and even as things were, I was more than once deceived for the moment.
At the same time, he is not full of continual merriment like the chickadee, nor occasionally in a rapture like the goldfinch. Life with him is pitched in a low key; comfortable rather than cheerful, and never jubilant. And yet, for all the towhee's careless demeanor, you soon begin to suspect him of being deep.
The goldfinch looked on with interest, though I think he understood it no better than I did; he seemed surprised, but rather pleased, for he repeated his calls, and the Golden-wing kept up the strange exhibition for some time.
He had seen the flaming heart of the volcano tamed and quieted until it became the flaming little Humming-Bird. He had seen the Crow turn black and the Goldfinch become a gaudy bird, and he knew how and why all these things had come to pass.
As with the goldfinch, the reason is, probably, that suitable food for the young cannot be had at an earlier period. Like most of our common species, as the robin, sparrow, bluebird, pewee, wren, etc., this bird sometimes seeks wild, remote localities in which to rear its young; at others, takes up its abode near that of man.
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