My daughter, Leilani, has tons of Goldfinches in there place. I’ve had none. Zero. Well, I saw one brightly colored male one this spring, but he went elsewhere. Leilani suggested that we switch to hulled sunflower seed to see if that would increase our Goldfinch population. So we did. And now my motto is, if you do that, they will come. Not only will a few of them come, but they will bring their entire ʻohana, calabash cousins, and anybody else that they happen to see.
Goldfinches are now eating us out of house and home. The seed is really expensive, and the inside hulls are messy. But having all these guys around is helping to brighten up my days, so to me, it’s worth it. Even though I have two feeders with the seeds up, the birdies fight and argue over who’s going to get to them first. There’s a lot of action at the feeders. There are so many Goldfinches that they can empty a tube feeder in about a day and a half. We can’t afford to keep filling yet another feeder, so the sweet birdies are going to have to keep trying to settle it among themselves. It seems like every day brings more of them. Am I sorry I started this? Nope. Not at all.
(If you turn the sound way up, you can hear them arguing about who gets to kapu the perches on the feeder.)
A Mānoa Girl's Bloggie 
Wow; that IS a busy feeding station! I’ve stopped feeding because of cat and terrier, but when I did, the cost of seed (I used whole black oil sunflower seeds) was well worth the amount of entertainment it brought to our deck..
I’m glad Chuckie doesn’t have the feeders to tempt him; or Poppy, either. We still use the black oil sunflower seeds and the Chickadees like them, but the Goldfinches don’t. I figure that with this pandemic going on we’re saving money from elsewhere so that we can justify the seed cost.
Wow, sistah, you get CHOKE goldfinches! I saw exactly *one* last spring, but I live in a more urban neighborhood than you do. That’s so neat that you get to see so many.
A few years (four or five) go I passed close to a field of oilseed rape that hadn’t been harvested quite a while after it was ready. Suddenly it came alive as thousands of goldfinches flew up to roost on power lines overhead. The sight was quite mesmerising as they returned to the crop and flew up again as I moved. I’ve probably got pictures somewhere.
What a sight that must have been!!! Thanks so much for sharing your experience; I’d love to see photos!