The European Goldfinch is a striking small finch with a distinctive red face and black-and-white head. Its wings are black with a bright yellow wing bar, while the body is mainly buff or light brown.
During the breeding season, the bill of male and female goldfinches is white, but at other times of the year, it is marked with a black tip.
Female goldfinches are very alike in appearance to males, and visually, it is hard to tell them apart from a distance. At close range, the sexes can be distinguished by the size of the red facial patch, with the females not extending past the eyes as it does in males of the species.
Juvenile goldfinches do not develop adults' red, white and black facial markings until the late summer or autumn after hatching. Until this point, they have streaky buff-brown markings on their heads. Info: Birdfact . com
I turned the key and waited. After a while the door opened of its own accord, very slowly as if someone inside the wardrobe was forcing it. And then the black tulle skirt poured forth and the door stood still. I did the same thing several times. Each time Mummy's tulle skirt opened out as it is was alive.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
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A cow thinks he can jump over the moon, so he's leapt and employed wings to succeed. Moral of the story: Believe in yourself. If you believe you will succeed, the chances are very likely you will.
Grandfather was a clergyman and used to preach to the King. Once, before his children and his children's children and his children's children's children covered the face of the earth, Grandfather came to a long field which was surrounded by forests and hills so that it looked like Paradise. At one end it opened out into a bay for his descendants to bathe in.
Then Grandfather thought, here will I dwell and multiply, for verily this is the Land of Canaan.
Then Grandfather and Grandmother built a big two-storey house with a sloping roof and lots of rooms and steps and terraces and a huge veranda and placed plain wooden furniture everywhere inside and outside the house and when it was ready Grandfather began to plant things until the field became a Garden of Eden where he walked around in his big black beard. All he had to do was to point at a plant and it was blessed and grew until it groaned under its own weight.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
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