A Cute Goldfinch

Here is a male American Goldfinch in winter plumage.

Fortunately he was too busy snacking on these seed pods to care about me getting too close with the zoom lens.

As I got closer he started to get a bit worried. Is this human going to ruin my breakfast?

Unfortunately the red tailed hawk started screaming above and scared the goldfinch away before I could get more shots of him.

The prairies of Illinois are great for observing all sorts of seed eating birds. Just hang around a while and you can see plenty of goldfinches, juncos, sparrows, chickadees and nuthatches. Birds of prey like to hang around the edges of the prairie to dive bomb rodents and smaller birds as well.

Tons of robins were hanging out in the trees, their red breasts match the leaves nicely right now.

I ended up following the first goldfinch into the edge of the trees where he could hide better from the hawk.

Here he is puffed up on one of the trees.

Now he is looking really suspicious of the human that followed him there. First hawks ruin his breakfast and now this paparazzi will not leave him alone.

He ended up flying deeper into the trees to get more privacy.