American Goldfinch among coneflowers
Spinus tristis
American Goldfinch · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 19 August 2026
An olive-yellow goldfinch, a female or a bird of the year, clinging to a coneflower stem gone to seed in the August border, with a haze of purple flowers coming into bloom behind. Goldfinches live in weedy fields and gardens across North America, and a border left to go to seed is the whole point of the season for them.
August is the goldfinch's spring: they nest later than almost any other North American songbird, timing it to the seed crop of thistles, coneflowers and their relatives, and the young are fed on regurgitated seed rather than the insects most songbirds rear their chicks on.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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