Operation: Thistle Invasion

[buzzsaw]

A few images of Goldfinches and there favorite food plucking grounds, the Thistle weed.

[Tom Wilson]

very nice Mike

[buzzsaw]

A couple more from yesterday...

Being that I was in my SUV, these were all hand held, not my normal mode of operandi. Here's one that I definitely would have preferred to have the tripod set up on.

[buzzsaw]

The bird forum has died... Hopefully it comes back to life.

[Dotch]

Nice photo of the goldfinch on the primrose seed pods.

Fear not buzz, State Fair is on and people are trying to get those last minute vacations in. I felt just awful yesterday after nailing a goldfinch with my truck. It came out of the ditch before I could react and was on the way down in its sine wave like flight. Ironically, I was on my way to Fleet Farm to get more thistle seed.

Since it's a little cheaper than the thistle seed, decided to try a small bag of the mixed finch food to see how they like it. Filled one sock type feeder with thistle and one with the mixed seed but haven't seen much activity on the mixed seed yet. With the amount of food they have to eat right now between the sunflowers, native prairie flowers and thistle seed, it may not be a fair test. But, it's always interesting to see what they might like.