A male Lesser Goldfinch among thistle, in the restrained palette of John James Audubon’s Birds of America: cream ground, faded seed-heads, the dark back and white wing flash set against clean yellow underparts.

Spinus psaltria is the western feeder goldfinch, smaller and darker than its famous cousin, with a back that runs from olive in California birds to near-black further east. The detail that separates the two species in life, here held in one frame.