American Goldfinch, female, on coneflower
Spinus tristis
American Goldfinch · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 19 August 2026
A female American Goldfinch on a coneflower head gone to seed in the August border, working the disc for what's left in it. Goldfinches are birds of weedy fields and gardens across the continent, and August is their nesting season, timed to exactly this seed.
Duller olive-yellow than the male and without his black cap. Goldfinches are about as close to a pure seed-eater as a songbird gets - even the nestlings are raised on regurgitated seed, which is why a cowbird egg laid in a goldfinch nest generally comes to nothing: the cowbird chick can't survive on the diet. The spent seed heads a tidy gardener would cut back are exactly what this bird is here for.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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