Mystery bird: European goldfinch, Carduelis carduelis

European goldfinch, Carduelis carduelis (protonym, Fringilla Carduelis), Linnaeus, 1758, also known as the Eurasian goldfinch, British goldfinch, eastern goldfinch, grey-crowned goldfinch, or simply as the goldfinch, photographed in Brereton Heath Local Nature Reserve, Congleton, Cheshire, UK.

Image: Roy Hill, 22 March 2012 (with permission, for GrrlScientist/Guardian use only) [velociraptorise].
Canon 5D mkII + Canon 500mm f/4L

Question: This lovely British mystery bird has been used in several forms of art; including paintings, music and poetry. Why is this bird so popular and what does it symbolise? Can you identify this mystery bird's taxonomic family and species? If so, what field marks gave this bird's identity away to you?

Response: This is an adult male European goldfinch, Carduelis carduelis. This Eurasian songbird is placed into Fringillidae, the true finches. This species ranges across much of Europe, most of Asia and even into northern Africa. The northern populations of these birds are migratory, whilst those farther south are resident.

This widely-ranging species is divided into two major groups -- a small Asian group, and a much larger European/African group -- based on distinct plumage patterns and colours. The two groups, which comprise a number of recognisable subspecies, intergrade at their range boundaries, so they are not considered to be species.

Since I've been writing all day long, my neurons are tired, so I am going to let one of the mystery birders, icancho, provide a few more taxonomic insights about this species:

I guess there's nothing being given away at this point to say that this species is a member of the Fringillidae, the so-called 'true' finches. Like many seed-eating 'finch-style' birds, this family is undergoing a substantial taxonomic rearrangement, and at various hierarchical levels.

The family's basal taxon is its nominate genus Fringilla; then surprisingly, but now unambiguously, comes the neotropical Euphonias and Chlorophonias, previously though to be allied to the tanagers, Thraupidae.

Then it gets messy, and at present all remaining species are collected into a single subfamily, containing everything from the Hawfinch and a few other massively-billed species (including the Evening Grosbeak —but few others commonly called 'grosbeaks' — more convergence!), bullfinches, rose-finches (mostly Carpodacus, which now excludes the House, Purple and Cassin's Finches), Hawaiian Honeycreepers (big surprise!) and then a final tribe containing all the canaries, siskins and allies, including our fellow here.

This final group, which includes most British finches, itself seems to require substantial surgery, with many generic re-allocations, disturbing to all of us who learned their bird names 25-30 years or more ago. Such generic re-shuffling ejects all the American 'representatives' from the genus of our charming (vernacular) bird ... ... leaving with only two congeners! [link]

I also asked about the symbolic associations that we have with this bird, a question that icancho also answered quite nicely:

I think we all agree that this bird is a "black seed— or thistle— eater"; but this same bird also has many cultural references, including those of Christian iconography. This is the meaning of the several references to brambles and/or briars: the crown of thorns and Christ's foreshadowed doom. So brambles and thistles point in the same direction, at what Takenegi cleverly referred to as "a charming and precious little bird".

As it turns out, this little bird is named for the thistle, via the Latin for that plant (also represented in its French and Spanish names). More trivia: the Latin for "a place of thistles" is supposed to be the origin of the name of a village in Burgundy which in turn gave its name to a famous variety of grape and style of white wine. [link].

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