The Goldfinch In Our Yard

This morning, Pat went out onto the upstairs patio, as often is her habit. In a few minutes, she called me out and pointed out a brilliant yellow and black bird that had perched at the edge of our little fish pond and was seriously eyeballing something in or on the water. I haven’t seen yellow so bright and brilliant in nature in a long time.

We got a good look at the bird. I went in the house to get my binoculars, but when I returned, Pat said the bird had gone into the trees behind our house. Going back inside, I got my bird book and looked it up.

It didn’t take much to connect what I had seen with the American Goldfinch picture in the book. The match was almost exact. I then looked in the book for a little more information on the visitor we had briefly a few minutes before.

Among other things, the book said the birds were chiefly seed eaters. They also, unlike many species of birds, nest in the late summer and only hatch one brood due to that quirk. The book went on to explain that since seeds become more prevalent later on in the growing season, the birds wait to hatch their young until food becomes more plentiful.

Thinking about that, I wondered just how the theory of natural selection might explain how and why these birds ended up not even trying to hatch young ones until more of their preferred food was available. I imagined eons ago these birds trying, but failing to keep their young alive as they hatched broods in the spring like many other birds. I guess natural selection would say something like, “These families of birds died out, not being able to reproduce. However, some of the finches who (for whatever reason) happened to wait until later in the year to hatch their young, were successful and passed that trait on to their offspring.”

That may sound good to many of you, but it presupposes a lot of things. First, it assumed that the birds were totally unable to reproduce in the spring, which is not supported by any factual information. Second, it assumes that some of the species somehow did not hatch until later on in the summer…again, not supported by fact. Third, it assumes that the seasons; spring, summer, fall, and winter, were always what they now are. We know that isn’t so. Fourth, it assumes that those that did hatch in the late summer were somehow able to pass along that information in their DNA to their offspring.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me much more likely that an intelligence of some kind planned for the goldfinch to do exactly what it does rather than a series of random chances that rely on unproven assumptions caused the end result of the American Goldfinch in my back yard today.