Goldfinch

Carduelis carduelis

⏵ In the Middle Ages, the flash of red on a goldfinch’s head was believed to be a symbol of the blood⏵ The 1654 Dutch Golden Age painting by Carel Fabritius depicts the artist’s pet bird chained on a perch; it attracts long queues in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, where it’s part of the permanent collection.⏵ The painting plays a central role in American author Donna Tartt’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel . Protagonist Theodore Decker takes it from the rubble after a bomb explodes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.⏵ Popular Victorian pets, they were known to perform dexterous tricks, including drawing up water from a glass with a thimble-sized bucket on a chain or opening their own feeding chests.⏵ Thousands were captured from the wild and caged, causing a population crisis, until a 1933 act prohibited the sale of wild birds.⏵ It’s an image Thomas Hardy captured in his poem : .⏵ While juvenile goldfinches are dull in colour, they later develop their distinctive bright red face and yellow wing patch, making them easy for even a novice twitcher to identify.