Mike in the Wild

That tweet emanating from your backyard?  It's a house finch.  The crowds of birds flocking to your bird feeders?  They're house finches.  The birds building a nest in the cranny under your home's eaves?  Again, house finches.  And the birds who laid pale blue eggs in a completely different nest in the wheel well of your coronavirus-idled car?  Yep, still house finches.  Sometimes it seems like they're the only bird species in the wild. While quite common throughout many natural habitats in the western United States, they're especially prevalent in urban environments.  The males are more colorful than the females, who are drabber and lack the bright red plumage on their heads and torsos.  With such a multitude of them, they seem to join rock pigeons and house sparrows as quintessential city birds, scraping by on mankind's limitless detritus.   So I wasn't overly excited a couple of weeks ago when I noticed a small female ho...

Even after only a couple years birding in Arizona, it's not often that I encounter a new bird species in my home state, let alone in my very own yard.  So you can imagine my surprise after I recently identified my very first Cassin's finch at my weekend home in Prescott. I don't visit that area frequently in the colder months, but on my occasional winter and early spring visits I still fill the seed feeder that gives me hours of birding fun in the warmer weather.   Because it had been empty for a few weeks, most birds had wisely moved on to more dependable sources of food.   So I wasn't completely surprised - just a bit impatient - when the feeder still remained bird-less the day after I had replenished it. Eventually I noticed a few house finches stopping to feed, initially disappointing me because they are quite common birds in every corner of the state.   But before long, I was thrilled to see more unique mountain birds like chickadees, nuthatch...