Sounds like scale, they're a sap sucking insect with a bit of a hard shell over their back. There are insecticides for them and you can also rub them off with cotton buds dipped in alcohol. But you have to check thoroughly all over the plant and in all the nooks and crannies for any hiding that might later breed up again.

Hi allymarie, I think it blooms when it can. I mean it will keep generating new growth. Until November or December. Depending on the weather. And as that matures it produces flowers.

Yes, cheap seed is filled with millet, loved by grackles, House Sparrows, pigeons, etc. You can get rid of many vermin birds and attract Goldfinches by switching to Black Oil sunflower seed (BOSS) and using tube feeders, or feeding the more expensive Nyjer, or thistle seed. Suet feeders will attract woodpeckers and wrens (mine especially love the 99 cent peanutbutter flavored suet packs from WalMart), orange halves will attract orioles, hummeringbird feeders will attract hummingbirds, but to attract Bluebirds you might have to serve live Mealworms. You can buy most feeders and feed inexpensively at a big box store like WalMart, as well as inexpensive backyard bird field guide booklets. Or you can order a more expensive field guide book, like The Sibley Guide to Birds, used, on Amazon.com

Readers Digest Book of North American Birds; ISBN 0895773511; 1990. A Fufous-sided Towhee: Pipilo erythrophthalmus: "Scratching about with one foot at a time, like barnyard poultry, rufous-sided towhees gather their food from the very bosom of the earth. It is little wonder, then, that these active birds used to be called ground robins, especially since their well-hidden nests of stems and leaves are nestled so close to the ground. Today they are named towhees because that is the sound most people hear in their song. But they were once known as chewinks, from the call they make when alarmed. In some parts of the West that call is phonetically transcribed as shrenk, while in others it sounds more like the meowing of catbirds. In sections of the Southeast they unquestionably call Louise! And although their song is translated into English in most parts of the country as "chip towhee" or "drink your tea," the birds seem to drawl it in the South, and are apt to sing chip chup chup zeeeeeee, or just a buzzy zeeeeee, in the West. Their visual field marks too are almost as varied as their vocal ones. Rusous-sided towhees in Florida have white eyes instead of red ones, and those in the West have two white wing bars plus numerous white spots on their wings and backs. But no matter where they live, all rufous-sided towhees come flying in low to the ground with the side patches in their tails looking like white chiffon streamers trailing dramatically behind them."