Recently a blogger responded to a blog I wrote a couple of years ago concerning American goldfinches plucking the petals off zinnia blossoms to reach the seeds found on the plant’s seed heads.  

       Blogger Joyce M. wrote that she has noticed that hungry goldfinches in her backyard appeared to attack the largest red and yellow blossoms.

       This prompted me to go back and check the notes I made when my wife was the first to notice American goldfinches plucking the seeds from the zinnias growing in containers on our deck.  In our case, although red, pink, orange, and while zinnia blossoms were all blooming at the same time, the birds seemed to prefer doing a number on the red zinnias.

       Do the goldfinches that pluck petals off your zinnias seem to remove the petals of zinnias of a certain color?

       If you want to find more information about American goldfinches, go to the search bubble found on the right side of the blog page and type in goldfinch and hit returned.  You will find the blog’s archive contains several blogs concerning this colorful backyard visitor.