Belted Kingfisher and its Barn Swallow tormentor<\/a><\/span><\/span> two days ago I spent some time with some young Yellow Warblers on blooming thistle. They were busily feeding on aphids and maybe their ant attendants on the thistle.<\/p>\nThe warblers were slightly side lit and they usually had their heads down as they looked for aphids so I found it difficult to get light in their eyes but this one looked at me long enough for a single shot that included a catch light.<\/p>\n
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I can’t help but like the thistles even though they’re an introduced species that is often considered to be a noxious weed. Their showy flowers can provide a very attractive and interesting setting for bird and nature photography since a variety of critters feed on their seeds and the insects that crawl all over them in great numbers.<\/p>\n
But as a Montana farm boy I do understand the flip side. One of the most difficult weeds to eradicate we had in our barley and wheat fields was a related species of invasive thistle farmers up there always called ‘Canadian Thistle’. Once a patch of that nasty stuff got started in a field it was almost impossible to eradicate and man did it ever spread. Virtually nothing else grows in a thick patch of thistle and during harvest our combines had a hell of a time getting through it or going around it.<\/p>\n
I remember the three weeds we hated most in our fields were wild oats, bindweed and Canadian Thistle, not necessarily in that order..<\/p>\n
But at this point in my life I’m a bird photographer so I like thistle, at least in some ways. I guess it depends on your perspective.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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Note: On this morning I took many photos I like of Yellow Warblers and American Goldfinches feeding on thistle (actually on insects on the thistle). But after yesterday’s marathon kingfisher post I thought we all needed a bit of a break so I decided to keep today’s post relatively short. I’ll probably post some of those photos at a later date.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Young birds are popping up all over the place in the mountains right now.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,8,392,3486],"tags":[5260,831,185,4666,2589,2588],"class_list":["post-87817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-yellow-warbler","tag-canadian-thistle","tag-introduced-species","tag-invasive-species","tag-musk-thistle","tag-setophaga-petechia","tag-yellow-warbler"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/yellow-warbler-4262-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-mQp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/yellow-warbler-4262-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"yellow-warbler-4262-ron-dudley\\"")
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