Painting #12 - American Goldfinches on a Thistle Feeder

American Goldfinches eating thistle seeds on the feeder outside our kitchen window.

Even in their dull winter plumage, enough yellow remains in our goldfinches' feathers to brighten the greyest of Cincinnati days. This small flock of goldfinches visited our thistle feeder during the Great Backyard Bird Count of 2007. Rick (the Reluctant Birder) was the photographer back then, and he took the photo I used for this painting. These sweet birds didn't mind the snowflakes at all as they meticulously pulled one tiny thistle seed after another from the mesh screening of the thistle feeder.

This is painting #12 in the...

Hints of Autumn at Fort Ancient

Birding at Fort Ancient

...continued from Thursday's post on the Chickadee and the Little Miami River Bike Trail.

Even though the afternoon sun is hot and sweat is dripping down my back, as I watch a goldfinch rip through the silken strands of a ripe thistle head, I can sense the gentle shift of summer to fall. It's dryer now, and the reds and yellows of autumn leaves are just starting to push through the deep greens--just a little--tints of color here and there. I'm always reluctant to let summer go, but standing in the meadow with the tatty, molting goldfinches all around me, and with glimpses of fall color peeking out at the forest's edge, I can feel my defenses dropping as fall lures me in with her charms.

The meadow at Fort Ancient

Birding at Fort Ancient
...continued from yesterday's post.
At the South Fort, just before the North Lookout, I found a lovely meadow filled with wildflowers, bees, butterflies and hummingbird moths...not to mention a bird or two!

Thistle is always willing to sit still for a photo

...unlike the little brown birds flitting around.

The tiny little spider on the right is yellow-green

and very pretty with reddish stripes and a red

head band. I have no idea what type he is...

(Click to enlarge...)

Note: Maree of Art & Creativity just wrote in and thinks this little fellow is a crab spider. She said crab spiders take on the color of the flower they are sitting on (see her comment in the comment section). A chameleon-like crab spider...how cool! I need to get a book on spiders and read up, but I have to admit they sort of give me the willies. I had a nasty little black spider live in my ear for about 12 hours one day, and it was truly horrible. I didn't know he was in there...I thought it was water. By the end of the day I had a fever and the crackling was driving me insane! I jumped up and down, shaking my head sideways while lightly pounding on my head to dislodge the "water." I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Eventually, a black spider crawled out of my ear canal and into my hand. Needless to say, it freaked me out, and I've been wary of the fellows ever since! I went to the emergency room because I was afraid he was a she and may have laid eggs. When you go to the ER with a spider in the ear, they jump to. Apparently if they bite you, since it's so close to the brain, it can be bad. So.....that's the reason I have not bought a spider book. I think I need to get over that!

Another lovely sign! Yeah...the meadow is being

maintained! I don't know if they are worried about

non-native invasive species, but they

are keeping it cut as a meadow...

Do you see the bit in the sign about Bobwhite quail? It's been years since I've heard one, and the last time I saw one was in 1991 at Clifty Falls in Indiana. When I was a kid we had a slew of them in our backyard. I grew up hearing their lovely song all the time! The horrible blizzard and severe winter of 1978 decimated their population, and their numbers have not been restored to those of the 60s and early 70s. I can't wait to hear them again (Bob...Bob....White!).

On goldfinches and weeds…

The bubbly, happy song of the American Golfinch has grown even bubblier around our house in the past few weeks, and our resident males have taken to perching at the top of the half-dead willow tree to sing merrily to the sky over and over. It seems as the lull of summer starts to set in, the American Goldfinches are just getting their party started. Of course, all of this isn't just by chance. Mother Nature has preordained most of it, but I've taken a few steps to ensure the little gold sweethearts find our yard especially attractive. I've planted lots of the goldfinch-loving food, such as echinacea (Purple Coneflowers, White Coneflowers, and even Tomato-soup Red Coneflowers), Black-eye Susans, Green-eyed Colleens, Zinnias…and Sunflowers (although last week most of my sunflowers fell victim to decapitation by industrious little squirrels and crazed night-raiding raccoons.)

A sketch I did of an American Golfinch on a sunflower.

I love watching these little yellow birds prying seeds

loose one at a time. A wonderful sight of late summer...

But I think the biggest draw to our yard is in the part of my garden I have let Mother Nature work her magic in…the weed patch. More specifically, the “hated and dreaded” thistle patch!! I know an entire industry has grown up to eradicate this weed, but my goldfinches love it, so I do too. Last week the lovely purple blossoms atop the prickly stems started to crack and ripen, and the soft tufts of down began pushing through much to the anticipation of our female goldfinches who use the plant fibers to line their nests. It only took about two days before the goldfinches started pulling small tufts of the silken thread from the ripening flower to take back to their small, cup-like nests—the perfect lining for the eggs she will soon lay.

Thistle down is a magnet to female American

Goldfinches. It's lovely to watch them balance on

top of the stalk and carefully tug the fibers loose.

They also eat the seeds and feed regurgitated

seeds to their newly hatched young.

Most spring and early summer breeding birds depend on insects to feed their young who require the protein to grow and mature, but goldfinches feed their babies an almost exclusive vegetarian seed diet, with thistle seed being a big part of it. American Golfinches wait until the summer's blossoms have started to fade and release their ripened seeds just in time for them to feed their babies. I love this perfect cycle of nature. Everything fits together as it should.

Soft fuzzy plant down just waiting to be

incorporated into a nest. Goldfinches will

feast on the seeds through the autumn.

Beak Bit
Cowbirds parasitize American Goldfinch nests quite often because the Goldfinch does not have the ability to recognize the egg and push it out, but Cowbird babies rarely survive more than a few days because they can not grow on an all-vegetarian diet. They need the protein found in insects to survive. For more information, click here.

One of our American Goldfinch males sitting on

a branch at the top of the half-dead Weeping

Willow tree. He looked so gorgeous last night

singing and preening in the evening sun.