. The birds of California : a complete, scientific and popular account of the 580 species and subspecies of birds found in the state. Birds; Birds. The Green-backed Goldfinch Authorities.—Gambel, Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., ser. 2. vol. i., 1847, pp. 52-53 (habits and nesting); Atkinson, Oologist, vol. xi., 1894, pp. 240-241 (habits); Ridgway, Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus., no. 50, pt. 1901, pp. 115-116 (crit. re arizonm); Grinnell, Con- dor, vol. iv., 1902, pp. 115-116 (crit.); Oberhoher, Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., vol. xvi., 1903, p. 116 (desc. of hesperophilus); Beal, Biol. Surv. Bull., no. 34,
. The birds of California : a complete, scientific and popular account of the 580 species and subspecies of birds found in the state. Birds; Birds. The Green-backed Goldfinch Authorities.—Gambel, Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., ser. 2. vol. i., 1847, pp. 52-53 (habits and nesting); Atkinson, Oologist, vol. xi., 1894, pp. 240-241 (habits); Ridgway, Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus., no. 50, pt. 1901, pp. 115-116 (crit. re arizonm); Grinnell, Con- dor, vol. iv., 1902, pp. 115-116 (crit.); Oberhoher, Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., vol. xvi., 1903, p. 116 (desc. of hesperophilus); Beal, Biol. Surv. Bull., no. 34, 1910, pp. 73-75, pi. vi. (food); Chambers, , Condor, vol. xvii., 1915, p. 166 (nesting). _ THE GREEN-BACKED Goldfinch is, after the "Linnet," possibly the most abundant numerically of the breeding birds of central and western California. That he is not also the most familiar can be due only to carelessness or inattention on the part of a too easily satisfied public. Gen- tle, trustful, dainty, musical, inoffensive, sociable, and abundant—these adjectives certainly entitle their subject to the fullest recognition on the part of Californians. The Green-back, too, is a bird of all seasons. It is well distributed at nesting time, insomuch that a bird-lover may scarcely cock his ears out of doors with- out catching the plaintive sweetness of the keyring call, near or remote. Spring or summer, little companies of them will foregather in the shade trees and raise a little hurricane of song, breathless gladness of childhood welling from a hundred child- ish throats. In the autumn the Goldies make common cause with the flocking Linnets, and glean from the roadside, or else straggle over the weedy meadows by the thousand. At such a time the telephone wires bear more than messages, and what they carry is of more worth, to my notion, than nine-tenths of what passes unheeded beneath the birdies' toes. There is no flock impulse or solidarity of action among goldfinches. A g
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