I’ve been stalking this guy over the past month. Reduced to bird-seed bribery and a tri-pod, I finally got some pictures of him (yeah, this is really what I do all day). I told you about him last year. He’s quite the handsome fellow, anybody know who he is?
Here’s a picture of him with a friend. A common bird I don’t know the name of, it’ll give you an idea of his size.
And here’s a picture of the fist-sized nest he knocked out of the tree this year. Maybe it’s an annual thing? Talk about spring cleaning, just ditch the house altogether. Good thing he doesn’t live in a trailer, I could just see that falling on my car -and he poops enough on that as it is.
Not one to quibble over paper or plastic, he says “I’ll take both, please”.
According to my Peterson’s field Guide, the little guy with the red is a male House Finch. The female will be similarly marked, but without the red. The black capped fellow is a House Sparrow, although I grew up calling them English sparrows. Also a male. Sarah@dosfashionistas
I think the red bird is the purple finch.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Purple_Finch.html
It’s hard for me to tell them apart from the house finch but your bird has the purple on the tail.
Here’s a link to the House Finch
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/House_Finch.html
The other is the evil House Sparrow. It’s an import from the 1800’s. If you are trying to attract bluebirds, the House Sparrow will invade the Bluebird nests, kill the eggs and nest in the Bluebird nest. Here’s some reading about the House Sparrow.
http://audubon-omaha.org/bbbox/ban/hsbyse.htm
Probably more than you wanted to know! LOL!
I agree. House finch. We get a lot of them at times. The “sparrow” is actually a Weaver Finch. We call the English Sparrows too. There are tons of native American sparrows that are really sparrows, and they can be great fun to try to identify once you start noticing them. They’re all sizes from quite tiny to larger than the English Sparrow. Bird books can be quite seductive.
Great photos!!
I would say it is a sparrow that dunked its head in red wine; that’s why it can’t defecating on K’s car!
I love him! :-)
Since I wrote, I found another nest which would be about par since I see two males. Maybe there’s more but I see two together. And two females. I can’t see the difference btwn purple/house finch but judging from the females, I think these are house finches. I’d have to take their pictures to know for sure. They’re pretty little girls too.
Now if I could figure out how to keep that hog (a dove) out of the feed, I’d be happy. She/He is a Pee Eye Gee PIG!
I was going to say purple or house finch, too. We used to have them nest under our porch (before our house was renovated, then they stopped coming.) We could stand on our tiptoes and peer into the nest in springtime, and see all the cute babies! My DH put up a little birdhouse after the renovation, and we did have a pair nest in there, too.
I think there’s a website where you can hear their songs, etc. I’ll have to google it and find out.
I’m back with the page that has its song:http://www.learnbirdsongs.com/birdsong.php?id=15
Love the bird watching. We have Cedar Waxwings that pass through our neighborhood during the winter. I did not know they existed until my 9 year old son pointed them out. I thought he made the bird up. Sure enough they exist and are now my favorite and very pretty bird to watch for. They are even more pretty when there is a flock of them hanging out in the trees. Here is a link to some great pictures….
http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/cedarwaxwing.htm
[Oh finally I can delurk because I have something intelligent to say!] Your brown friend is a house sparrow. The amount of brown he has on his chest indicates his relative dominance in his flock.
While house sparrows are becoming endangered in England [and there are all sorts of endangered creatures plans developing for them], they are a declared pest in Australia [where eradication strategies exist].
yep, that’s your basic purple finch.
if you decide to add just a bit more to do to your busy life- go get a feeder (we need squirrel proof where I live), and load it up with cracked sunflower seeds. Your will attract a lovely group of small birds who will sing to you most of the day- finches, warblers, other small birds. Probably the best thing I did in the last year.
There is a grosbeak that has started to hang around our kitchen- I think it is my mother, who passed away in the fall. She used to call me everyday between 8:30 and 9:15 and sure enough, here is this bird, rapping on the window at that time to get my attention. hmmm
Kathleen grumbled, on the afternoon of April 3rd
Now if I could figure out how to keep that hog (a dove) out of the feed, I’d be happy.
My small-bird feeder is one of those tubular plastic doobies with perch bars sticking out from below the feed holes. It is surrounded by a cage of 1 1/2″ wire mesh, a bird strainer. The big guys have their own, open-trough feeder.
A happy accident of the marketplace was that the feeder is 16″ high, and the cage is 24 3/4″. The space between perfectly holds a 1 gallon jug of bird seed standing neck-down on the feeder’s top.
Browsing in _Birds of New Mexico_, _field guide_, by Stan Tekiela, I get a good match on male House Finch, with Cassin’s Finch offered for confusion, being more of a rosy red and lacking the brown cap of the House Finch.
I dunno, if that’s so, the gazillion House Finches in this area are Cassin’s. Humph!
The other bird well matches male House Sparrow.
Checked Stokes _Field Guide…_, House Finch: yes, Cassin’s: no. Small wonder I find birders a bit wierd.
Cornell’s site is helpful for id’ing ‘look-alikes.’ I think a house finch is what it is, too.
Dr Sharma’s comment about being dunked in red wine is perfect. That’s exactly the description that I learned. (I was also told that a male Purple Martin looks like a swallow that fell into grape juice. It’s always stuck with me.)
Birds are great, cheap entertainment. (no pun intended, I swear.) Hummingbirds are really funny to me – they’re fiercely territorial. We had one that would ‘guard’ our front yard and ‘yell at’ anyone entering. I was tempted to put up a sign saying ‘Warning: this yard guarded by an attack hummingbird.’ You probably have lots of hummingbirds down in N.M. to observe.
I was on google to try and find out what kind of bird this wasI was on google to try and find out what kind of bird this was< I'm happy to have gotten all of your wonderful info. I have a beautiful couple at mt birdfeeders and I was wondering the same as you.
Is anyone having troubles with other critters getting into their bird feeders? I got really bored this January and decided to get a bird feeder. (2 actually!) Two weeks later there was a baby bear on the railing emptying the bird feeder. He came back for a couple of months, and I now have a racoon who raids it at night when I forget to bring it inside. We have had a variety of bears here, including a family of four and several 400-600 pounders… Whenever I speak of the feeders I call them “Bear feeders”- a Freudian slip for sure!
I have one of these & his little sparrow wife raising their nest in a fern on my balcony.