Purple Finch (female)

A flock of purple finches arrived about a week ago during the snowstorm, extremely hungry. They were all over the tube feeder, mixing it in with the goldfinches, fluttering against the window, landing on our tiny window ledge and looking for all the world like they were peering into the kitchen. (I don't really think they can see into the house or I wouldn't be able to stand so close.) I'd never seen purple finches before and it took me a while to decide whether they were purple or house finches. Things have calmed down since that first frantic morning and now they come and go from time to time - but only the females! Pity, because although the females are a lovely soft brown, the males are an impressive pinky red colour - quite beautiful.

This bird is perched on one of the sticks that I mentioned yesterday, clamped next to the tray feeder on our balcony. She's taking a careful look around before jumping into the tray and going head-to-head with the juncos over sunflower seeds.

I don't know if we can expect the purple finches to stick around over the summer, or if they just taking a rest stop on their journey further north.

In other news, it was a beautiful day, almost reached 70˚, and the snow is miraculously mostly gone, surviving only in the shady spots and the places where it drifted. We can walk to our maple trees without boots now. Compare this with last Friday, when we were cross-country skiing on the golf course!

P.S. I'm thinking of adding 'sound for the day' - wish it could be a recording but I'm just going to have to describe it instead. Today's sound is the incessant high pitched machine-gun dew-dew-dew-dew volleys from the flocks of juncos as they squabble over food. Heard a lot of that while I was waiting for a finch to pose!