Singing Out of His Tail Feathers

sometimes you don't get a photo, but you still get a story!

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This is a story about an American Goldfinch. Usually, I like to share a photo along with my nature stories. But this time I didn’t actually have my camera with me (we do occasionally do things separately). And honestly, if I’d had my camera with me, there’s no guarantee that any picture I took would have remotely captured this particular scene.

Goldfinches, for me at least, are notoriously hard to photograph. They are a cheerfully constant presence in the summer, flashing about in streaks of blazing yellow, harvesting seeds industriously, singing and singing and singing. But they are also very small and very fast and very, very busy, and those are all things that can make photography challenging.

Whenever they see me approaching they are quick to flee to high treetops or distant perches where they become a gentle blur at the maximum range of my lens, translating themselves into soft artistic portraiture rather than sharp wildlife photography. Perhaps this is a genre that they more properly belong to, anyway :)

But back to my story. On this particular sunny spring day, I was resting for a moment in the wild apple orchard before heading inside for lunch, gazing up through the canopy of apple blossoms as I listened to the chorus of birdsong. I picked out the enthusiastic solo of an American Goldfinch nearby. Very nearby. And as I idly scanned the upper branches with my binoculars, I suddenly discovered that he was perched directly overhead!

I was staring through magnification straight into the soft golden roundness of a fluffy feathered backside.

Typical, I thought, my mind lightly retracing a long line of bird-butts featured in the archives of both my memory and my photography. They do have such a habit of flashing you the tail just as soon as you get them in your sights!

His smooth charcoal wings, tucked tightly against his sides, formed gentle sweeps to left and right. His sleek tail, viewed end-on, presented as a simple triangle in the center.

Happy and comfortable on his perch, he was still singing. An American Goldfinch sings with every feathery fiber of his being, and as he launched transcendent notes heavenward, his tail waggled with the overflow of energy.

And it just so happened that his wagging tail kept perfect time with his warbling song. With my world reduced to the single circle of my binocular-view, it looked for all the world like I was gazing at the singing end, except for the occasional moment in which a bright orange beak would peek out from behind a feathered shoulder and shatter the amusing illusion.

So not only are American Goldfinches bright and cheery, energetic and lively, their songs entirely enchanting - but they’re equally delightful no matter which end you end up with!🤣

(Happily for my positioning, at no point did my musical entertainment decide that he needed to evacuate any chambers in order to take flight. Because there are certain risks inherent to the life of a bird admirer.)

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I told my family the story of the American Goldfinch who was singing out of his tail feathers. Between my husband and three kids, I tell any given story between one and four times at first occurrence. In this case, I told it twice. First to my husband right afterwards, still giggling from the whole encounter. Later, to my kids, accompanied by a line-drawing to help illustrate the general hilarity. I enjoyed telling it, and re-telling it, and I enjoyed telling it again in this essay!

We (humanity) used to tell stories all the time. Numerous cultures across long ages have richly preserved their entire legacies through oral tradition. Family stories were handed down across generations like polished heirlooms worn smooth with frequent revisiting. It’s worth thinking about, in a day and time that’s always rushing us from one story to the next newest and latest. That’s bored with something so last season. That’s used to constant content generation.

And sure, there really are new stories unfolding all the time, every day, especially within source material so rich as the natural living world around us. But our stories are honored in the remembering, in the reminiscing, in the retelling. Because that’s the thing about stories - all the best ones grow richer with repetition.

This story is cute and funny enough that it will probably enter the rotation of Remember That Time When stories that our family often shares. “Remember that time when I squeezed your cheeks and I didn’t know you had water in your mouth?” “Remember that time when the weasel was chasing the chipmunk up the tree, and the chipmunk base-jumped into a pile of branches and ran away?” “Remember that time when you were taking a picture of that Spotted Sandpiper, and you said Oh where did the other one go and they were mating?! AWKWARD!”

I like telling old stories over again. And not just because I’m getting older and more forgetful 🤣 Did I ever tell you about the time…? 🤣 But also because I’m getting older and more appreciative of connecting deeply and strengthening bonds and weaving tapestries, and this is where the story, shared often and fondly, excels.

Don’t hesitate to tell yesterday’s stories and last year’s stories and your childhood stories and your ancestors’ stories. Sure, add new treasures to your storehouse, but don’t neglect to bring the old ones out from the back and shine them up again right alongside. The stone shines the brightest the more it’s polished.

I hope the Goldfinch, singing out of his tail feathers, will be a story that I can revisit for many years to come, to warm giggles of golden memory, until it is well-worn and polished smooth through affectionate repetition, an integral element in the cairn of our family history.

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