In mid-May, along one of my favorite walkways, Scottish thistle had grown up in bunches and had attracted many bright yellow goldfinch. There were about ten goldfinch, males and females all flying back and forth to each tall thistle. The thistles were about to open their huge purple blooms that go to seed later in the summer and feed the goldfinch into the winter. I had pointed this out during one of the bird walks that I led and watched as birders stopped to take lots of pictures of NJ’s state bird.
        The Scottish thistles were on a hillside along a Scottish golf course that had been created to cap and hide a legacy city garbage dump. The golf course took pride in having re-claimed the land and offered the nature walkway as part of the deal. Scottish thistle is usually considered an invasive plant brought to NJ in the ballast of ships during the days of the tall sailing ships that needed ballast, dirt loaded into empty ships, to keep them upright on the turbulent high seas.
        Yesterday, I went for a walk and discovered that the golf course crew had gone along the hillside and cut down every thistle. With this loss of thistle, there was not one goldfinch to be seen in the area.
        What an irony that a Scottish links golf course was removing Scottish thistle. But I remembered from last summer, seeing the crew out sprinkling yellow particles, some kind of herbicide on young thistles. Apparently the thistle seeds had blown onto the greens and caused new plants to invade the perfect lawns of the golf course.
        The crew had successfully chopped down the highly invasive plants and carted them away, taking the beauty of the goldfinch with them. It’s the pain you suffer when you live in an urban area and try to find some link to nature.