The Call of the Goldfinch
One morning, earlier this year, I was sitting in my garden, cup of tea in hand, with the Merlin bird ID app open. Alongside our friendly garden robin, I realised we were surrounded by a charm of goldfinches. Their chirp is gloriously joyful, like cheerful chattering friends sharing news and gossip.
I had thought these were migratory birds, coming to visit us here above Loch Ness in late spring for the summer. I checked with a neighbour who is knowledgeable about these things, and sure enough, they’re here all year round, if there is enough food for them. They are seed-eating specialists; their fine beaks allow them to extract otherwise inaccessible seeds from thistles and dock plants (their latin name carduelis carduelis refers to the thistle). Overwintering goldies are happy with nyger seed and sunflower hearts in garden feeders. Apparently they are often found in flocks, flitting among fields and gardens, adding a touch of cheer wherever they go.
For a reason I can’t quite explain, this charm of goldfinches really had an effect on me. It was like a wake-up call, intensifying or clarifying some thoughts that had been on my mind for a while.
Being a human in the world has felt especially heavy in recent years. With the relentless cycle of bad news, genocide, war and unimaginable suffering, climate anxiety, the ‘mirror world’ of politics, the sheer insanity of 2025 so far—it feels as though we are living through a time of collapse, of reckoning. There are days when grief, despair and fear of the future weigh so heavily that hope feels impossible. But in listening to the goldfinches, I was reminded of this poem by Emily Dickinson:
‘Hope is the thing with feathers’
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all.
I was also reminded of a time in my life when, after a long period of stress and burnout, I was really called to become more attentive and attuned to the world around me. I tried for a while to make a daily ritual of pausing to listen to the birds, but it requires discipline, and life is full of so many distractions. With spring approaching, it feels like the right time to begin again.
So, I was called to do some research on this wee yellow thing with feathers, only to find out that it carries deep meanings and rich symbolism that spans history, art and mythology. In European folklore, with its vibrant plumage and beautiful song, the goldfinch is celebrated as the ‘bird of joy.’ Renaissance artists used the goldfinch to convey messages of hope, renewal and the presence of the divine in everyday life. In Celtic culture, birds were often seen as messengers, and the goldfinch was believed to be a harbinger of good luck and fortune. Celtic tradition also associates finches with spiritual guidance. In Gaelic, the goldfinch is the lasair-choille, or the flash of the forest, with her yellow wings and flecks of red. In Scots, she is the goldie, or gowdspink.
These wee creatures were once popular as caged singing birds, especially in Europe; and so, in poetry, they became a symbol for both captivity and freedom. For Scots poet Robert Fergusson (1750-1774), the gowdspink—brawest ‘mang the whistling choir—was a symbol of freedom. He contrasts the bird’s natural joy in the wild with its sorrow in confinement, arguing that no material luxury can replace the joy of a liberated life: Your bonny bouk frae fettering cage / Your free-born bosom beats in vain / For darling liberty again.
The goldfinch is also quietly resilient. For centuries, these wee birds were trapped ad sold: thousands were taken from the wild, their songs silenced in markets and parlors, their numbers dwindling across Britain. Eventually, conservation efforts and legal protections, such as the Wild Birds Protection Act of 1880, helped turn the tide. Today, their cheerful flashes of yellow and beautiful song bring us delight—a small but defiant triumph over the forces that once sought to contain them.
I have written previously about the birds: how they are our measure, our meter, marking the coming and going of the seasons. It feels to me as though the seasons are passing by at an ever-quickening pace; that time and life are speeding up. This sense of time accelerating truly set in after I gave birth to my daughter. I think this is a common experience for new parents: in the early days of raising a child, routine turns life into a blur. The days feel long, but the months and years seem to fly by. And as we marvel at our wee child growing and becoming—learning first to walk, to speak, then to run and dance, to draw and paint, to write her name—the passage of time feels less abstract and more intensely real. It’s a bittersweet mix of nostalgia and total wonder. I suppose, for me, this also ties in with a fear I have had since primary school: that as we age, each year becomes a smaller fraction of our total life lived, making time feel like it’s passing faster. One year is now as small as 1/40th of my experience on the earth. I suppose I have just become acutely aware of the transient nature of life—just how precious and quick it all is.
Years ago in studies I came across this idea of ‘time-space compression,’ a concept that describes how technological and economic changes have dramatically accelerated the experience of time and distances. Originally, sociologist David Harvey (1989) used this idea to explain the way capitalism speeds up production, communication and travel, making the world feel smaller and more interconnected. Social media intensifies time-space compression, making the world feel faster. The constant stream of updates creates the sensation that everything is happening all at once, overwhelming our ability to process events meaningfully. We also experience a loss of locality, feeling hyper-connected to global events but disconnected from our immediate surroundings. With endless scrolling and algorithmic feeds keeping us in a state of constant stimulation, time feels like it’s slipping through our fingers.
Like many people I know, I feel a deep urge to reclaim my time and attention and lean into more of an analogue life: to read more physical books, to spend more time in the garden, to play more music, learn crafts, paint pictures. These are the things I long to do instead of staring at my phone. It’s so simple, so why does it feel so difficult? In some ways, the digital world feels like it has become its own gilded cage—shiny, immersive, seemingly full of endless possibility, offering the illusion of choice and agency yet ultimately a space of confinement and control. I feel locked in, trapped by the constant pull of distractions; my attention is fragmented between digital and physical worlds.
I do want to disconnect from social media and screens, but it’s not easy. These platforms are purposefully designed to keep us consuming, hooked on a dopamine-driven cycle of decision-making and endless scrolling. I mean, I have learned so many things from Instagram reels—how to grow sweet peas, how to craft fairies out of acorns, why magnesium is so important, recipes galore —but what did I lose??
It haunts me how much time I have wasted on the internet. I have been on social media in some form for almost half my life; I’m perhaps lucky that I remember what it was like before.
I can appreciate the good things. As a new mother during COVID, the digital solidarity I felt was a gift. In the isolation of lockdown, online communities became a lifeline—a space to share experiences and seek advice in the exhaustion and uncertainty of those early days. I found comfort in strangers’ words, in late-night messages exchanged with other sleep-deprived parents, in the reassurance that I wasn’t alone. But even then, it was a double-edged sword—offering both solace and a subtle erosion of presence, pulling me away from the moment, fragmenting my attention just when I wanted to be most grounded. A message thread can’t replace a hand on your shoulder or the quiet reassurance of a friend rocking your baby so you can rest. The village we need —of care, support and human touch—can’t be built through a screen.
The compulsion to document and share glimpses of our lives online is deeply strange when you really think about it—offering up our thoughts, photos and moments to an invisible audience. It turns private moments into performances, everyday experiences into content. It’s ironic that in trying to capture life, we often miss the experience of actually living it—viewing a sunset through a screen rather than just watching the glow fade. Why do we feel the need to do it? Is it connection? Validation? Or just a habit ingrained by the platforms designed to keep us engaged? Our children certainly did not consent to this.
Unlike her cousin the canary—who signals only a warning—perhaps the goldfinch offers both a warning and a call toward something more live-giving, urging us to leave a toxic environment and reconnect with what truly matters. This year, as I wander into my fifth decade, maybe this charm of wee yellow things was singing: Do it! Reclaim your time, your attention, your creativity!
Many of us have been frustrated with the dominant platforms like Facebook and Twitter for years, yet we’ve stayed—not because we love them, but because we care about the people and communities we’ve built there. Years of memories, conversations and connections are archived there. But it’s not the same as it used to be.
The revolutionary promise of the early days of social media has long since faded. What was once decentralised, distributed and organic has now been captured, co-opted, enclosed and monetised. The process of enshittification has drained meaning from these once-thriving, vibrant, authentic digital villages, transforming them into siloed, ad-heavy, user-hostile wastelands filled with AI-generated slop. The logic of capital has eroded the very thing that made these intangible spaces valuable in the first place.
Gutenberg’s invention in the 15th century sparked the information revolution; Its profound implications unfolded over centuries, becoming a catalyst for both revolution and bloodshed. The printed word brought new ideas to the masses, fueling political upheaval, shifting power structures and forever altering the course of human history. Now, we find ourselves in the early stages of the digital revolution, unfolding at a speed we can barely keep pace with, with far-reaching consequences we can only begin to comprehend.
As information is increasingly controlled and manipulated, the spaces meant for free expression have become battlegrounds for misinformation, post-factual politics, manipulation and unchecked corporate influence. The same tools that could connect the world and foster community have been weaponised, amplifying division, undermining public trust and distorting truth. The cost is staggering. Polarising, reactionary, empty and deeply damaging discourse has become the norm: Cambridge Analytica, Brexit, ‘flooding the zone,’ the U.S. elections. All of this leads to the systematic hollowing out of democratic institutions, and poses a profound threat to democracy itself.
With social media, what started as something radical and democratic has morphed into its opposite: controlled by the concentration of power in the hands of a few. The very systems designed to liberate us have instead ensnared us in a cycle of exploitation and distraction, trapping us in a world of extreme and increasing inequality, economic precarity, surveillance capitalism and corporate control. This stage of the digital revolution has been heralded as the new Gilded Age. Mendacious, tyrannical, billionaire tech barons now control vast swaths of the economy, media and information, censor newspapers, buy presidencies and roll back what little protections existed—all in the name of expediency and profit above all else. In the US, we are witnessing the merger of Silicon Valley and state power in real time. Those who once masqueraded as champions of free speech and innovation have revealed themselves as weak, misogynistic, self-serving emperors.
For me, participating in these huge platforms feels like tacit support. I left Twitter when it became X. With recent comments from Facebook’s chief, its rollback on fact-checking and loosening rules on hate speech, enough is enough. Leaving is an act of resistance. It is a declaration: I do not consent.
Do I opt out of social media completely? I’m so conflicted. There are so many good people out there sharing valuable, inspiring things whom I’d love to engage with and learn from. I just wonder: will platforms like Bluesky, or Substack, eventually fall prey to the same fate, becoming co-opted by the very forces they’re trying to escape? As they grow, they’ll inevitably need more money, infrastructure and servers—resources that often come with their own compromises and pressures. I haven’t yet fully explored other alternatives—the so-called fediverse of decentralised, autonomous networks running on free open software: places like Mastodon that aspire to be free from ads, data exploitation, manipulative algorithms or corporate monopolies. For now, I’m left grappling with the tension between connection and caution, unsure of where to go from here.
Part of my desire to step away from the digital world and embrace more analogue living is, I think, a rational response to the deep uncertainty of our times. It is an acknowledgment that we are living through a time of climate crisis, systemic collapse and the erosion of trust in institutions that were once seen as stable. The modern infrastructure we rely on—energy grids, supply chains, financial systems, even democracy itself—feels increasingly fragile. In response, learning how to grow food and preserve it, cooking from scratch, learning traditional crafts, mending and repairing, practicing mutual aid and building local community networks become not just acts of resilience, but of radical hope. As the world unravels around us, we must build what we can. We will not find a monolithic alternative to the status quo, but we do have within our power the potential to cultivate a root system of alternatives—both big and small—and reclaim a sense of possibility.
The irony is not lost, but I saw a post on Instagram that really sung out to me: STOP CONSUMING, START CREATING.
There is something exciting about the idea of analogue revolution. This is not about withdrawal or isolation, it’s about redefining connection on our own terms. We can return to human-scale networks: face-to-face conversations, print publications, local gatherings and shared experiences. We can create communities where trust, care and genuine exchange thrive—where our time is our own and our attention is not for sale.
Breaking free isn’t about rejecting technology entirely, it’s about reclaiming autonomy: recognising how our attention and time are commodified and choosing instead to cultivate a life that is truly our own. A chance to reclaim time and creativity. Freedom isn’t just about escape—it’s about choosing where and how to exist. Ultimately, embracing a more analogue life is an act of self-determination: we don’t have to accept the world as it is being shaped for us, we can reshape it ourselves. We do have the power to decide how we engage, what we prioritise and how we build lives that are more real, more intentional and more aligned with the hopeful futures we want to create.
What can we learn from the goldfinch? She is the bird of joy and freedom, calling us towards a more liberated life. She reminds us that joy itself is an act of resistance. She sings of possibility, of renewal, resistance and hope. She calls to us to embrace the natural rhythms of life rather than the artificial urgency of the digital world. I have found so much inspiration in this wee yellow thing with feathers, whose defiant cheerful presence reminds us—in the face of a world that weighs so heavy—to appreciate the beauty and joy in small things. Sometimes, these moments—these wee glimmers of hope—are exactly what we need to carry on.
Howp is whit sits licht as fedders
at the verra core o oor bein,
aye there, aye chauntin awa
at its ain wee tunes.
-Ian McFadyen after Emily Dickinson