With each passing day, the beautiful coneflower blossoms that adorned our gardens throughout the summer wither and die. When this occurs all that remains are prickly brown seed heads.  When this happens often your first impulse is to prune cut them off.  If you want to help many of the seed-eating birds that have called your yard home throughout the spring and summer, resist the urge to snip them off.

        The reason for this is each seed head contains 200-300 nutritious seeds.  Since the seed heads persist into winter, they provide seeding-eating birds with a source of food when food is scarce.  Indeed these natural seed feeders are an asset to any backyard.

        American goldfinches are particularly fond of the seeds; however, other birds dine on the nutritious seeds too.  The list of the birds that compete with goldfinches for this bounty include blue jays, mockingbirds, Carolina chickadees brown-headed nuthatches and cardinals.