A Vein of Gold

Did you know that a group of goldfinches can be called a "vein"?  Neither did I until today, but I rather like that!  According to the website Whatbird, they can also be called a 'charm', a 'rush', a 'treasury' or even '007'!  (all of them make sense to me except for the last one... can someone explain? perhaps something to do with "Goldfinger"?)  Well, anyway, on rainy days like today, I think they should be called 'rays of sunshine'.   Just look at this bright fellow:

Today, a flock of them is making up for the lack of sunshine at my house.

The males have mostly finished their spring molt.  Goldfinches are the only birds in the finch family that molt twice a year (spring and fall).  In the next photo, you can see that the male on the left is a little farther along in his molt than the one behind him.

In the next photo we have a male and female.

The male on the left is even farther behind in his molt than the ones in the previous photos.  

In the next photo, there's a pair taken on April 11th.  The crabapple leaves hadn't started to leaf out as much - though it was raining that day, too!

Now, we'll go even farther back-in-time to April 2nd.... it wasn't raining but the goldfinches still mostly had their winter feathers.  

Going back a little more, this time to March 22nd... snow still in the background.  Now I don't feel as bad about all the rain!

If you didn't know, you wouldn't think those were the same birds as this bright male from today, would you?

By the way, today starts the second year for my blog!  One year ago yesterday, I posted for the first time.  Goldfinches starred in one other post, last July, when I declared them the winners in my "Most Cheerful" bird contest.  (You can read it by clicking here .)

I'll end with a video from this morning of our goldfinches having breakfast.  We have so many of them that they don't all fit on the feeders, so I spread some sunflower seeds along the deck railing for them.  Many people put out Niger seed for their finches, but ours seem happy with black-oil sunflower seeds.  Overall, they seem like happy birds, but watch out - they just might be "007" in disguise!