For the birds...

[sleigh]

Three of today's bird feeder visitors: a male cardinal, a female goldfinch (the greenish one) and a male house finch (the reddish one) -- assuming I've identified the finches correctly...

Comments

[jennlk]

The goldfinch is more likely to be a male in transition from winter olive/khaki to bright yellow -- most females don't show that much yellow. (We have a flock of mixed finches who live nearby and spend much of the winter/early spring eating at our feeders....)

[maiac.livejournal.com]

That certainly looks like a male house finch to me.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I dont get cardinals here, but I have 5 bird feeding stations around my yard, and I get a plethora of species. The Goldfinches are back, and my Mourning Doves. Last week it was the Juncos.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I'm a rank amateur at this, so that may well be. I've been identifying birds I don't know through Cornell University's "Merlin Bird ID" app on my iPhone...

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

That's what the app on my phone indicated. Glad you concur, as you certainly know more than I do!

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

We have a couple pairs of Mourning Doves around the backyard also. Juncos I'll have to look up so I can identify them and see if we have those as well.

Love the cardinals though; we have a mating pair that have been around our house for the last two years.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

There's far, far more I don't know about birds than I do. But I'm especially familiar with house finches, because I have them in my own backyard.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

Dark-eyed juncos (the kind I see around here) are dark-gray on top and white underneath, sparrow-sized but a bit rounder. They're winter birds south of Canada, so you might not see any until next winter. They're ground feeders, and they'll be happy to clean up any seeds dropped from the bird feeder.

I love the cardinals, too. If you hear a sound like a cricket on speed, you have a cardinal nest in your yard and the babies are demanding to be fed.

[jennlk]

There's a lot of birds I don't know, but I'm fairly confident about the ones I have in my backyard. Except the sparrows -- I'm usually good at "yeah, that's a sparrow", but anything more specific than that is beyond me.

[jennlk]

I haven't seen any juncos here for a couple of weeks -- they seem to leave about the same time that the red-winged blackbirds show up. One of these years I'll have to keep a log of bird observations.....

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

I also get Flickers..

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

How lovely they are!