losing feathers / reintegration into wild

Question
Hello,

I have a question about an American Goldfinch that I handraised since he was a few days old.  I won't get into the circumstances as to why I have her in my care, but she is a few months old and is caged with a society finch with regular time for flying outside the cage.  She recently went bald on her head and lost feathers on her one wing, making her unable to fly.  She seems to get along fine with the other bird, so I'm not sure if it is the result of extreme preening or not.  Any ideas as to what's causing this?

Also, I didn't release her this year since it got cold very fast and I wasn't sure if she'd be able to integrate with the other fiwnches before they migrated.  I'm  wondering if it will be too late to release her in the spring?  Will she still learn how to be a wild finch at that stage?  I realize that a cage isn't the best place for her, even with time outside the cage, but is that the only option for her at this point?  Any advice you can give would be much appreciated.  I contacted people about this, but wasn't given much assistance.  

Thanks so much for your time,

Lindsay

Answer
Hi, Lindsay.  Thanks for posting!

The finch might be losing some feathers due to molting.  It's that time of year where all birds, who are not nesting or with babies, molt every feather on their body and replace them with new ones.  However, this molting should not be too visible, as they don't lose all their feathers at the same time.  Could possibly be due to overpreening by another bird, but you'd have to be the judge of this, since you can see what's going on with the birds.  The fact that the goldfinch is bald on top of his/her head is an indication to me that someone else is doing this, since the finch can't reach the top of it's own head.  Could also be a medical condition, such as lack of certain vitamins, minerals, proper lighting, etc.  

You can't release this bird into the wild until it knows how to fend for itself.  If you've raised this bird since it was a baby, it doesn't know how to find food and water in the wild on it's own, and it doesn't know how to protect itself from predation.  You need to teach this bird these things before releasing it if possible.  It might be possible this finch could learn from a wild group of finches if you were to release the bird next year with a group of finches of his/her own species, but they may not accept the bird.  If you intend to release next year, you need to spend the winter teaching this bird how to survive.  This means "weaning" it from your attention, but at the same time, finding a way to teach s/he to find food and water on it's own.  I raise homing pigeons and if they doesn't come home from a race for whatever reason, they likely die because they don't know how to find food/water on their own since I've fed them/put water in front of them all their lives.  Although instinctually they fear hawks (hawks eat pigeons), they wouldn't know what to do if one came near them because at home, they are shielded from them by aviary wire.

If you have a garage or a spare room you could use to turn the finch free in and hide it's food/water to help teach the bird how to find food itself, although not an ideal set up, it might work.  Of course you realize that what you might currently be feeding this bird likely won't be available for him in the wild, you'd have to feed the types of food the finch might find in the wild so the bird will recognize the types of food it should be searching for.  The internet would be a good source for researching the types of food goldfinches eat in the wild.

I hope I've helped you with this situation.

Chrys