Wildlife, landscape and weather photography
An American goldfinch displays some pretty nice dexterity in getting a sunflower seed. We are still seeing these colorful little guys in the backyard but I don’t expect for much longer as they soon will be heading south. These and the chickadees are probably our favorite backyard birds other than hummingbirds (which have been scarce this year).
Most birds in Colorado are pretty dull in color, no doubt as a defensive measure to camouflage themselves. These guys though are anything but dull with their bright yellow and black plumage.
We have heard them throughout the summer from our backyard but only had fleeting glimpses of them until recently. As our sunflowers dried up, the goldfinches have taken an interest and are now regular visitors, coming by to pluck the seeds.
They really are pretty birds although in these head on shots, I can’t help but think they kind of look like Moe from the Three Stooges. 😉
I didn’t have a lot of motivation to go out looking for critters last Sunday and had managed to create myself a lengthy list of chores that needed to be done at home.
As tough as it was, I made the decision to put work before play and set about doing various things in the yard and around the house. Our local critters had another plan though.
Over the past two years, driven largely by my wife, we have been working on a major renovation of our backyard. This has included ripping out about 3,000 square feet of grass and replacing it with drought tolerant plants and flowers.
For me, one of the benefits is that we are starting to see an uptick in the number of type of birds that visit and that was wholly evident on this morning.
Among the highlights were a black-capped chickadee, an American goldfinch and even a few hummingbirds. They made it a bit hard to stay focused on work as I instead focused my camera on them. 😉
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