Goldfinches

This year, I have been very consistent with keeping my bird feeders full. I even expanded by purchasing a thistle feeder in order to attach finches to my yard. Boy, has it worked. Goldfinches, I just learned, tend to stay together in small flocks longer than other species of birds. Because of their food requirements; seeds, which are more prevalent as the growing season progresses, they mate later in the summer. Knowing that they like seeds, I have let my flowers go to seed after blooming. Several years ago I planted Cosmos, an annual, which finches favor. Now, I don't even bother to plant them anymore, because every year the seeds that have fallen uneaten have grown the following season.

I managed to capture the male goldfinch above while getting a drink. Below in the first picture, is the male eating at the thistle feeder. The second picture is the female eating from the feeder I keep filled with sunflower seeds. If you are curious to know what the finch birdsong (as well as many other species of birds) visit the Macaulay Library.

More Dragonflies

We have a bumper crop of dragonflies again this summer. It is amazing the variety of colors, shapes and sizes.

This is a Spangled Skimmer who was sunning himself or herself on the garden pathway.


This in a Common Green Darner. I caught this one having a rest on a daylily in the front sun garden.





This last one, is a Common Basket tail. It perched on one of the plastic plant stakes I had used to support my peonies, when they were in bloom, earlier this summer. I was standing about two feet away when I shot this picture. I can't believe how still it stayed.

Foxgloves and Agatha Christie

Foxgloves are steeped in folklore. These plants are also the source of digitalin, a strong heart stimulant which in excess can cause death. Agatha Christie used digitalin poisoning more than once in her writing. In "The Herb of Death," a Miss Marple short story found in The Tuesday Club Murders, foxglove leaves are mistaken for sage and used to stuff ducks for dinner. Tommy and Tuppence, Agatha's husband and wife sleuthing team, encounter foxglove leaves mixed in with spinach for a salad in Postern of Fate. In both cases, the entire household partakes of the meal and gets sick, but only one member of the group dies. This is because someone has secretly added a fatal dose of digitalin into a drink the victim has imbibed. Agatha was famous for having more than one murder occurring in order to mask the true victim or motive for the murder. Often some innocent person was bumped off by the murderer in order to cover his or her tracks. No one would suspect one of the household as being the poisoner if everyone was sick. In many of her stories, the poisoner did just that, knowing that a little bit of the poison might not be fatal to himself, and thereby throwing suspicion onto someone else. Very tricky, but Agatha's sleuths always discover the culprit in the end, usually after a few more corpses have piled up.