Attract Nature’s Vegetarians - Goldfinches to the Garden
Brighten your landscape by attracting goldfinches to your garden.
Create the habitat, provide some food and wait the arrival of these winged beauties. Goldfinches are strict vegetarians, eating a totally plant-based diet.
So, fill your garden and containers with their favorites. Include members of the Aster family like sunflowers, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers and asters as well as grasses and native milkweeds. Goldfinches do prefer thistles, but make sure you only grow native varieties that are not considered noxious weeds in your area.
Goldfinches breed in June or July when the down of milkweed, cattails, thistle and dandelions is available for nest building. They also feed the fibrous seeds of these plants to their young.
Create nesting habitat and shelter with dense shrubs like dogwoods, elderberry, buttonbush and hawthorn trees.
A bit more information: Goldfinches can be found across the U.S. and southern Canada. It was the sixth-most reported bird in the 2014 Great Backyard Bird Count.
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