A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident  

When March arrived without a trace of spring, I began to look for subtler signs. I found some on the golden yellow of the pine siskin, applied as an accenting coat, streaked randomly along tail feathers, breast and wings. It is a cousin to the goldfinch, who now also begins to turn from its drab winter coloring to bright yellow. 

I find both around our feeders constantly. I recently discovered everybody isn’t a goldfinch. Their differences are obvious, once you see them, though both are finches. Our siskins and goldfinches have more golden yellow feathers today than four days ago, when this photograph was taken. 

Feathery gold is accumulating now, each day more and brighter, a seasonal optimism. While the goldfinch doesn’t migrate, the siskin sometimes does, depending on weather and food availability. The golden colors of both birds return gradually. The siskin flies north, though ours seem to stay all year; the finch molts in place.  

Robert Frost wrote: “Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.” Gold and brightest yellow in nature seem ever receding, as Frost states in the final line of the poem which is also its title: “Nothing Gold can Stay.” However, I have a prosaic codicil to add.  

It is, “Sometimes gold returns.” It returns with the siskin. It returns with the spring molt of the goldfinch. Even gold, immutable, is subject to eternal return. You just have to know where to look for it.

 Photo by Kathleen Lyon