Thistle and Goldfinch for Green Thumb Sunday

Thistle and Goldfinch for Green Thumb Sunday







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The last couple of Sundays have featured Thistle and it's life-cycle from bloom to seed.

The seeds were still intact in last week's post, and I promised to show how they were dispersed in this week's entry.

Well - here's the guilty party - this innocent looking little American Goldfinch.

He perches his little self on the dried pod, and methodically pulls out the fluff to get to the little black seed on the end. Once he eats the seed, the fluff is discarded until it piles up like in the first Thistle post.

Those plants are full of thorns - you can easily see them in the photo above - but his little feet must be immune to them - he was flitting all through those plants.

The seeds pass through his system and he drops them as he does his business, and the life-cycle of the Thistle begins again.

I wish I could have been closer or had a longer lens to get a better shot of these little birds. They were very quick and skittish, so I apologize for the not too sharp, far away image.

I hope you enjoyed this series of photos. Thistle is also known as Milk Thistle, so perhaps you can guess what was growing prolifically alongside them. If not, come back next week and I'll show you!