The goldfinches are just getting started

Mid-August, and the yard has gone quiet — the catbirds skulking, the chipping sparrows in that ragged post-breeding moult, the phoebes already thinking about leaving. And then a male goldfinch went past the window with a billful of thistle down.

They do this every year and it still surprises me. Goldfinches are the latest nesters we have, because they feed their young a nearly all-seed diet and they want the composites — thistle, and to a lesser extent aster and sunflower — to be in full seed and down before they start. A pair that fledged young in June would have had to raise them on green, unripe seed. Waiting until August means the pantry is full.

There’s a side effect: Brown-headed Cowbird eggs laid in a goldfinch nest usually fail, because a cowbird chick can’t develop on that low-protein seed slurry.

One raspberry-washed Purple Finch at the feeder this morning, too — first in weeks.