We have dozens of American Goldfinches that overrfly our garden, use our feeders, fight and bite one another. Today when I saw bits of gold fluttering across the sky, most of them turned out to be leaves. Small floaters came from walnut, fruit, vine maple, ash. When a bigleaf maple loses a spent leaf it’s more like a sheet of paper or bright, lost handkerchief.
The day was warm, windy, wet, yet with some slanting sunlight from the east. The mix and magic produced our first local rainbow of the season.
Late in the day I noted one brave male Lesser Goldfinch amid his bullying bigger cousins, the “beakers”–American Golfinches attacking one another with pecks and pokes. Our jay contingent has expanded–now two Steller’s and a half dozen scrub. When I throw out the peanuts the scrubs no longer chase the quicker, shrewder, louder Stellers. Any scrub who does go in pursuit has to fly from the peanut area and the other scrubs take all the nuts. So it is Wall Street avian capitalism–every jay for itself. Grab the peanut and fly.
Still blooming–hydrangea, cyclamen, roses, phlox, cosmos, asters.
954 Ratcliff Drive SE, Marion, Oregon, US
Oct 27, 2021
11 species
Canada Goose 30
Northern Flicker 1
Steller’s Jay 2
California Scrub-Jay X
American Crow X
Black-capped Chickadee X
American Goldfinch X
Dark-eyed Junco 10
Golden-crowned Sparrow 2
Song Sparrow 1
Spotted Towhee 2
954 Ratcliff Drive SE, Marion, Oregon, US
Oct 28, 2021
11 species
Anna’s Hummingbird 1
Steller’s Jay 2
California Scrub-Jay 6
American Crow X
Red-breasted Nuthatch 1
Lesser Goldfinch 2
American Goldfinch 40
Dark-eyed Junco 10
Golden-crowned Sparrow 1
Song Sparrow 1
Spotted Towhee 1
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