We love the feisty American Goldfinches at our winter feeders. They’re acrobatic, noisy, and occasionally fierce. By the middle of May, the males will sport banana yellow breeding plumage. That color was a challenge to capture in colored pencil. This pair is at home along Indiana roadsides–a habitat with a lot of history.

In the early 1800s, federal survey teams in Northwest Indiana mapped waterways, recorded natural resources, and marked the grid-like boundaries of land parcels. Each parcel was given a legal designation: a section within a numbered township (north or south of a baseline) and east or west of a numbered range line (i.e. Section 6, Township 34 North, Range 7 West). These parcels were subdivided and sold by the United States Government. 

Land sales raised money for the government and accelerated expansion into formerly indigenous territory. By the late 1830s, native people in Indiana had ceded much of their land through treaties and coercion. Other efforts to remove native people from Indiana included the 1838 Trail of Death, during which 859 people were forcibly marched from Twin Lakes, Indiana, to Kansas, and 42 people died. During these years, homesteaders and land speculators eagerly expanded into Indiana, clearing trees and plowing the prairies. 

The landscape we see today is a legacy of the work of the early survey teams. Modern farms are separated by long country roads, hedgerows, and weed strips. When the land was cleared in the 1800s, wildlife likely struggled with deforestation and the loss of wetlands. The location recorded in this piece was wetland before it was drained for agriculture. But birds like the American Goldfinch have adapted well to disturbed areas, open fields, and the seeds of edge-environment weeds. Today they are widespread, cheerful residents of fields and gardens.

This piece is available for purchase. Please contact me for pricing.