Now That The Thistles Have Gone To Seed...

Smoke Signals

A female, American Goldfinch harvesting thistle seed and releasing thistle down ‘smoke signals’ into the morning breeze.

One sure way to locate one of those cheerful, little, butter-yellow needles (American Goldfinches), in the haystack (thistle field), is to study the air just above, watching for smoke signals, puffs of fluff and latent information, rising up to catch even the faintest breeze and float away…

See little clouds rising, again and again? You can be almost certain there is a Goldfinch somewhere in the tangle nearby, harvesting seed and releasing the unwanted fluff.

Nimble of beak, this male American Goldfinch deftly separates seeds from parachutes, sending the nonsense on its way…

The Goldfinches around here are feasting on thistle seeds these days, high energy little nutrient packets, with parachutes attached. These Goldfinches, while hanging upside down, or sideways grasp onto thorny thistle stalks and then pull individual seeds and sometimes small clumps of them from ‘gone-to-seed’ flower heads before separating the seeds from their light-as-a-breeze transport systems. The seeds they swallow. The fluff, they set free, to rise and drift off in any direction the closest little swirl or puff of breeze will offer a ride.

A female American Goldfinch, half invisible within the tangle of thistles and fluff.

After sacred time with Lesser Goldfinches in a sultry river canyon, last week, I was eager to sit with some of our more familiar, local, American Goldfinches and so, have headed off to the thistle fields two mornings this week, to settle in, make myself as non-threatening as possible and simply revel in the unfolding moments.

This handsome daddy is almost certainly gathering a meal for his kids back in the nest.

So, at the risk of overloading you with too many posts recently (believe me, I get how that is a real thing), I thought if I kept it really short and sweet, some of you might enjoy coming along…

This calm, thoughtful seeming moment, framed by backlit teasel stalks and leaves just slays me. An entire world and story in a frozen moment…

---

In The Garden Of His Imagination is a reader-supported publication and you may choose to be an important part of bringing more of these sorts of stories to the playground. To receive all my new posts and support my storytelling work, please consider becoming a paying subscriber. And for those who can’t afford or don’t yet see the value proposition in that, please become a free subscriber to receive notifications each time I post up new content.