The cone flowers have lost their petals and have dried up in the summer heat, but the loss to my eyes seems to be a definite gain for the birds. The seeds in the cone flowers appeared to be the favorite food of an American Goldfinch (Carduelis tristis) that I spotted today at Green Spring Gardens.
Normally I see the goldfinches only as a flash of bright yellow zooming past my eyes. In the past when I tried to photograph them they seemed to startle very easily at the slightest movement. Today I was able to creep up closer and got some relatively unobstructed shots of a goldfinch.
I may post some more photos later, but here is one of my initial favorites.
American goldfinch on a cone flower (click to see the photo at a higher resolution)
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Fantastic!
Lots of birds like coneflower seeds, which is why I don’t cut them back in the fall.
Posed nicely for you! Great shot.
Thanks. Stalking a goldfinch is not quite the same as stalking a hawk, but it does give a feeling of satisfaction to get a decent shot. (I had the impression that the bird’s attention was so focused on feeding that he had let down some of his normal defenses.)
Holy SImoleons! Great shot Mike. I rarely get near enough for finches to be more than a dot or a blur in my photos. Congratulations!
Thanks. I too have had real trouble getting good shots (they fly away so quickly) so I was really happy that day. Timing, luck, and a distracted bird made this shot a possibility (and the distance was close enough that the bird filled up a decent part of the frame using a telephoto lens (though there was some cropping).