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European Goldfinch | Carduelis carduelis
Putter | Jilguero europeo
The most colourful finch of the region, with a red face and a broad golden wing-bar. In the Maghreb and the Levant a common bird of olive groves, gardens and thistle patches, but also one of the most heavily trapped cage birds in the region.
Voice
The song is a fast, tinkling, liquid babble of clear notes, interspersed with a wheezy tzee-eh, from a treetop or in a fluttering song flight. The contact call, heard all year, is a light, dancing tickelit, which gives away passing flocks.
Recording: Andrew McCafferty — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
Red face mask framed by black and white head bands, sandy brown back and flanks, black wings with a broad gold bar and white spots on the wing tips and in the black tail. In the male the red reaches slightly further behind the eye. Juveniles lack the red and are dull grey-brown and finely streaked, but already show the full golden wing-bar. The form parva of the Maghreb is small and warm-toned; the form niediecki of the Middle East is paler and greyer, with a lighter back.
Confusion species
Adults are unmistakable. Juveniles resemble young Eurasian Linnet (Linaria cannabina) and Eurasian Siskin (Spinus spinus), but those lack the broad, unbroken golden wing-bar; Eurasian Siskin is also greenish and streaked, and Eurasian Linnet shows white wing-stripes. In the Gulf states escaped cage birds of related species may cause confusion.
Habitat
Semi-open farmland with trees and rough ground: olive, almond and citrus groves, gardens, parks, village edges, verges and fallow land with thistles, and open woodland and maquis. Nests high in a tree, often in an orchard or avenue tree. In winter in small flocks on seeding herbs, also in oases and on farmland.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
A common breeder in northern Morocco south to the High Atlas and the Souss, in northern Algeria, northern and central Tunisia and in northern Libya in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. In the east in Lebanon, western Syria, Israel, Judea and Samaria, western Jordan and northern Iraq; in winter more widespread, then also in the Nile Delta and Sinai, central and southern Iraq and scarce in Kuwait and the Emirates. Elsewhere on the Arabian Peninsula rare. Beyond the region across almost all of Europe and western and central Asia; introduced in Australia and New Zealand among other places.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In winter flocks on thistle patches and in olive groves in Morocco and Israel are easy to find; listen for the dancing tickelit. A goldfinch in a city in the Gulf is often an escaped cage bird.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. Common in much of the region, but trapping for the cage-bird trade is considerable in North Africa and the Middle East and has caused steep local declines, for example in Algeria.
Scientific name
Carduelis carduelis | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Fringilla carduelis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Carduelis was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Carduelis is the Latin word for the goldfinch, derived from carduus 'thistle', whose seeds the bird eats. The specific name repeats the genus name. The specimen the first description was based on came from Sweden.