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This colourful bird is thriving in Norway

Many bird species are struggling and declining in numbers. Fortunately, some species are doing well in Norway – such as the European goldfinch.

The European goldfinch is easy to recognise by its red face and bold yellow wing bars.

(Photo: Andreas Günther)

Morten Günther Communications Adviser

Presented by: NIBIO - Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research

Published 25 August 2025 - 00:01

The European goldfinch is a small, colourful, and fairly social finch. Despite its beautiful appearance, it is not among the best-known bird species in Norway.

When you see a goldfinch for the first time, it’s easy to think it has escaped from captivity. Birds with such bright colours are often associated with southern latitudes.

A big thank you to BirdLife Norway and its dedicated members. Every spring they head out early in the morning to listen for birdsong in the agricultural landscape.

The goldfinch can be recognised by its small, pointed beak, distinctly notched black tail, white rump, red face, and bold black-and-white head markings. The back is light brown and the underside is white. The wings are black with broad yellow wing bars.

In goldfinches, it’s not just the male that has colourful markings. Both sexes look almost identical. Young birds lack the red facial mask but are still relatively easy to identify by their characteristic wing markings.

Specialist in weed seeds

The goldfinch can be found in many different types of habitats, but it avoids dense forest and completely treeless areas. It feeds mainly on seeds, usually taken directly from flowers or seed heads, but can also be seen eating seeds on the ground.

With its small, pointed beak, the goldfinch is specially adapted to feeding on seeds from composite plants such as groundsel, knapweed, thistles, and burdock species.

Despite their bright colours, goldfinches can be surprisingly hard to spot when quietly feeding on weed seeds along roadsides or field edges. When they take flight, it’s often the yellow wing bars that give them away. You often hear them before you see them.

The goldfinch is usually quite social, and outside the breeding season it is often seen in flocks of 5–40 individuals. It can also form larger mixed flocks with other finches, such as siskins, linnets, and greenfinches.

European goldfinches eating seeds from thistles and burdock plants are an increasingly common sight in Norway.

Distribution and population growth

The European goldfinch is naturally found throughout most of Europe, North Africa, and the western parts of Central Asia. It has also been introduced to countries such as Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Uruguay, and Argentina.

In Norway, it is most common in the lowlands of Eastern Norway, especially around the Oslofjord, but also further up the Gudbrandsdal Valley, as well as scattered along the coast from Østfold to Rogaland.

The goldfinch has always been relatively rare in Norway, but in recent decades it appears to have become more common, while also expanding its range both northwards and inland. The species has, for example, established itself in Trøndelag county, where the first confirmed breeding record was documented in 2017.

In neighbouring Sweden, it is one of the breeding birds that has increased the most in number over the last ten years. This may be related to the fact that the species has increasingly begun to visit bird feeders in winter.

Although many farmland birds are declining in number, some show a positive trend. Among these, the European goldfinch has increased the most, according to 3Q data. The figure shows the trend as an index for the species that have grown the most since the year 2000. Stillits = European goldfinch, Gråspurv = House sparrow, Gulerle = Western yellow wagtail, Pilfink = Eurasian tree sparrow, Stær = Common starling, Sanglerke = Eurasian skylark

Records of European goldfinch on artsobservasjoner.no in 2014 and 2024.

Monitoring prevents change blindness and poor memory

NIBIO researcher Wenche Dramstad explains that it is important to monitor changes over time.

“We humans generally suffer from change blindness and poor memory. We quickly assume that it has always been this way. That’s why monitoring data can help us notice changes in nature. Things may not change dramatically from year to year, but rather gradually and subtly," she says.

There’s a lot of natural fluctuation. Variation between years is more the rule rather than the exception.

For many species, for example, a cold and late spring can have a major impact. The same goes for an extra cold or snowy winter. It’s only when we look at long-term trends that we can really find out whether there is a development in one direction or the other.

"Detecting such changes is a key driver in the monitoring work NIBIO does, for example in the 3Q programme. It was farsighted of ministries and directorates back in 1998 to initiate this monitoring,” she says.

The 3Q monitoring programme is a national monitoring programme for the cultural landscape of agriculture.

At that time, significant changes in the agricultural landscape had been observed, and reports were increasingly pointing out the consequences. Some of these changes posed challenges especially for species that depend on agricultural landscapes, such as the northern lapwing and Eurasian skylark.

Fortunately, there are also species in the agricultural landscape that seem to be doing well over time. Some appear to be increasing in number while also expanding their range.

The beautiful European goldfinch is one of them.

In recent years, the European goldfinch has become more common at feeding stations during winter.

About the 3Q monitoring programme

The monitoring programme Monitoring and Performance Control in Agricultural Cultural Landscapes, commonly known as 3Q, has been run by NIBIO since 1998.

Its goals include monitoring land use and land-use changes, as well as tracking how these changes affect biodiversity – initially focusing on birds and vascular plants, and later also butterflies and bumblebees.

By comparing aerial photographs from different years, changes in the landscape become clear. Researchers can see how the number and size of fields change, how new road projects appear, how farmyards and farm roads expand, and how field margins and farm ponds disappear, or new ones are created.

The 130 monitoring plots where birds are counted are spread across agricultural landscapes throughout Norway. Each plot covers an area of 1 x 1 kilometre. On each plot, nine points are designated, and within a circle with a 50 metre radius around each point, researchers record both the number of breeding bird pairs and various vegetation details. This allows them to understand the habitat requirements of different bird species and which landscape configurations support the highest number of individuals or species.

Each monitoring plot is surveyed every third year, and over time the researchers build a time series that shows population trends for the various bird species.