
I can’t let Northern Blazing Star season pass without properly celebrating it, so here is another Blazing Star shot. About one in a thousand (just a guess) Blazing Star plants produce white blossoms. I have no idea why…whether it is in the plant itself or in the soil, or some combination of the two. The plants appear otherwise healthy and identical to their purple counterparts. OM Systems OM-1 with ED 100-400mm zoom at 585mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Pro. ISO 200 @ f7 @ 1/800th.

American Goldfinch: York County, Maine, USA — Along the same lines as Goldenrod and Northern Blazing Star in the same frame, here we have a Goldfinch among Blazing Star. The same color contrast. 🙂 This time of year, as the Blazing Star blossoms ripen, there are flocks of Goldfinches out on the Plains, picking out the thistle like seeds. Getting close enough for a good photo is a trick, as they are fairly exposed and quite flighty. I took this from the seat of my trike, still clipped into the pedals, on the access road for the pond, low and through the foreground blooms. OM System OM-1 with ED 100-400mm zoom at 800mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Pro. ISO 320 @ f6.3 @ 1/640th. Heavily cropped for scale.