Hungry! Look at me! I'm hungry! Hungry here!

And so after my little butterfly extravaganza on Tuesday morning, you can guess where I went again on Wednesday. Yep, right back to the pollinator garden at the Arboretum, to see if I could locate the charming monarch butterfly who befriended me and sat on my hand the day before. I was hoping to see how he was doing, and if necessary, to render aid.

I looked carefully all around the area where I'd come across the butterfly, but found no sign of him. That's one of the hardest things about befriending wild creatures, especially those that have been injured, or those who are in some kind of distress: you never know what becomes of them. You never get to hear the rest of the story.

I did, however, have the opportunity to enjoy the sight of lots and lots of monarch caterpillars feasting on green leaves nearby. I don't know if it has been like this every year and I just haven't noticed it, but the pollinator gardens this year are a true monarch butterfly nursery. I will have to keep an eye out. Maybe I'll get lucky enough to get a shot of a new butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.

There was a ruckus at the treetops on this day, as on the day before. And I looked up, and zoomed in with the camera, to get a better look at what was going on. What I saw was hysterical. A juvenile goldfinch was doing everything it could think of to try to get the attention of its parent, so that the parent would feed it. The parent was having none of it.

The little bird danced up and down, up and down, on the highest branch of a nearby tree. It finally resorted to a sort of semaphore, arranging its wings into patterns, like an air traffic controller wielding a pair of flags. "Hungry! Look at me! I'm hungry! Hungry here!"

The parent bird, sitting on a branch nearby, studiously avoided making eye contact. It's that time of year when the youngsters turn into teenagers. If they're like my brother growing up, they eat everything in sight. A hungry teenager will eat you out of house and home. (My mother swore my brother must have had a hollow leg.) I could almost see the pained look on the adult goldfinch's face: "Oh, for Pete's sake! Isn't it time for you to move out on your own and get a job?"

Eventually, they flew away together, the larger bird leading, the little bird following. I imagine that when they left me, they sat down on another branch not too far away, where the pestering no doubt continued. There's never any rest for the parent of a teenager, not even a teenage goldfinch, especially a hungry, hungry one.

The song to accompany this hungry, hungry image is Bruce Springsteen, with Hungry Heart.

P.S. Bonus Blips. Last fall, the Arboretum had a lovely stand of sunflowers, which I visited often. I snagged two Blip pictures there, of young goldfinches pestering their parents for food. (Surrounded by sunflower snacks, the little birds couldn't find a single thing to eat! Imagine!)

Thursday 26 September 2013: Goldfinch Feeding Its Baby Sunflower Seeds

Thursday 3 October 2013: Baby Goldfinch's Sunflower Dance: "Feed Me!"