The other day I was returning from pre-recording one of my radio shows. It was a late summer morning with clear skies and the promise of a warm and wonderful day ahead. Alongside the road I was driving I noticed a number of Cap Plants (Silphium perfoliatum) in full bloom. Cup Plants are a tall native prairie plant that blooms with bright yellow flowers late in summer in sunny locations. Sitting on top of one of the blooms was a vibrant yellow American Goldfinch.

I am a sucker for any bird on a flower so I pulled my truck over to see if I can get a few images. Racking up my 800 mm lens on the tripod and mounting a camera body I started sneaking up on my quarry. Closer and closer I moved hoping the finches wouldn’t notice me.

The morning light was illuminating the bird and flowers perfectly and I was getting excited that I might be able to capture a few high images. Gently I set down my tripod and camera and started focusing on the goldfinches. I was capturing many great images when I started hearing some begging calls from a baby bird. Trying not to get too distracted I kept photographing the American Goldfinches. However the begging calls of this baby bird were getting louder and louder. I started to think, isn’t this a bit late in the year for baby birds?

When I looked up from the view-finder, I saw a juvenile Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea) perched high up on a flower stalk squawking and fluttering its wings. This is the typical behavior of fledgling birds when they are begging food from their parents, so I knew it wouldn’t be long before a parent would showed up. Now this was starting to make sense. Indigo Buntings are late nesting birds and explains why the begging youngster.

Within a minute or two a beautiful male Indigo Bunting showed up with a beak full of insects. The baby leaned forward fluttered even more while opening its own beak wide open. The father deposited the cache of food in the youngsters mouth and off the father flew. The baby birds was temporarily satisfied.

Well of course I was thrilled at this unexpected development. I quickly turned my attention to the Indigo Bunting and crossed my figures that the male or female bunting would return again to feed the baby. It didn’t take long and the male returned with yet another beak full of tasty insects. The baby now was deep inside the vegetation so I wasn’t able to get any decent images of the male feeding the baby. But I didn’t give up.

Eventually the male took a break from feeding the youngster and started to sing. In song birds, singing is used to tell other birds that they own a territory or to attract a mate. Since most of the mating was over for the year, presumably all of this singing by the male was to secure his territory.

At one point the male moved up to the top of a flower stalk and started signing. He didn’t seem to mind me moving around so I repositioned myself to obtains a better background. Through my view finder on the camera I could see that I was capturing some amazing images. A wonderful blue bird on striking yellow flowers. This is a hard to beat combination. He didn’t stay long on the flowers but did allow me to capture about a dozen images before it flew away. Even this late in summer, nature is still providing gifts of magical images and I was thankful. Until next time…

Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the US to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Facebook.com and Twitter.com. He can also be contacted via his web page at www.naturesmart.com