They All Came from Long Island

I find it hard to capture these little finch with their lovely color unless the light is early morning or late evening. They eat at my feeders but do not come close to the house unless it is very, very cold and I have sprinkled seeds near the water bowl. They do come more often for water.  Having a water heater for birds is not very expensive and does bring the pleasure watching the birds more closely.  This finch did have a problem in the northern U.S. with an eye disease and so I watch closely to see if any of mine seem to have that.  I do wash my feeders in bleach in the fall before I put them up.

It is easy to confuse the house finch and the purple finch as their colors and size are almost identical  If you can see them side by side you will notice that the purple finch is not actually purple but really more purplish than red. Its color is closer to raspberry and its neck seems smoother to me.  These here are definitively the house finch with their bright red colors.  The female is a dull gray and not nearly so lovely.  Notice the shape of the bill which means they eat seeds rather than bugs.  They are very shy among the other birds and wait until most of the other species are finished eating.  They do rush at each other, though.  I did not do much to these photos as the lighting came out nicely, but they are not sharp because they were taken through a window.

This photo immediately above was photo-shopped and the two others were not.  I sharpened the bird, adjusted the lighting and I added the Pyracantha berry in his mouth.  He had a sunflower seed instead..so this is not a good scientific photo and could confuse bird watchers if I did not admit this.  (This does NOT mean that they do not eat berries, because some of them do.  I know that the cardinal eats these berries.)