Lady Thistledown

cares not one whit about all those silly going's on in Bridgerton.

LADY THISTLEDOWN: a most handsome, female, ‘mother to be’ American Goldfinch in her cheerful, breeding plumage finery as she gathers the first perfect nestlining materials of the new season.

The paper and digital calendars say June 30, but her calendar measures time’s progression differently. June is named after the Roman goddess Juno – the god of marriage and childbirth, and the wife of Jupiter, king of the gods. So, though it may be fitting that on the final day of the month of marriage and childbirth this brilliant, yellow, feather-goddess began gathering those essential, final touches for her soon to arrive offsprings’ nest lining, her internal calendar’s alarm has begun ringing because the thistle down is finally available for the gathering and only incidentally because of what some man-made grid of months and days might say.

I’ve been checking the progression of these Canada Thistles for weeks now, wanting to be sure to be there when the American Goldfinches discovered that the thistles were now ready for harvesting. As I watched this cautious pair appear and reappear this afternoon, examining different ‘batches’ of pollinated thistle flowers to see which would yield perfect, soft ‘down’ I noticed that at this very early stage after pollination, they had no trouble biting down on and pulling away only the down, and not the seeds that are normally attached to these feathery wisps which can transport them great distances on the slightest of breezes. It made me wonder if this is by design; get in and get your fluff now, before the seeds mature and detach from the flower head with the slightest tug, along with the fluff. If so, those seeds may continue to mature, and may be foraged as food a bit later, even without their genetically provided transport systems (fluff), attached.

I also couldn’t help but notice that burying one’s head in a thistle flower to harvest its down makes one readily vulnerable to getting a shaft of thistle down stuck up under one’s eyelid, a thing that looks wincingly painful to my eyes each time they see it (and yet, with thistle down and thistle seed harvesting Goldfinches, this occurance seems almost inevitable …and surprisingly common.) I’ve got dozens of goldfinch pictures where there is a bit of thistle fluff protruding from beneath a goldfinch’s eyelid. Oyyy.

OK, I could drag this out, but won’t. It’s not a huge story… just really a glimpse at an occasion; the beginning in earnest of American Goldfinch nesting season here beside the Salish Sea. May the gods smile upon these beauties and bless their diligent efforts.

Here’s future Dad, testing, but not really gathering thistle down while perched within a few feet of his mate. Notice that he has a ‘sproink’ of thistle down (a very scientific term), caught under his eyelid, as well, You’d think from an evolutionary POV, they’d get better at avoiding this malady, wouldn’t you, so maybe it really is no big deal? And still, I wince.

Big Daddy-to-be contemplates the weird guy laying on the ground in the weeds. Feels like I get that ‘look’ fairly often. But then again, I guess quite a few birds see me there and need to decide for themselves if I’m dangerous, or just strange. I try to keep ‘em guessing.

Look real close and you can see the male who waits for his partner (just out of sight) as she tests several clumps of thistle down before beginning to gather. I thought it might be helpful for some to see just what a band of this thistle looks like from a distance. Their nest is presumably somewhere back in those trees.