Singing a Happy Tune

The tree next to my kitchen window is a house finch condo so I hear them sing a lot. When they do, they puff their feathers out and extend their neck, like this guy is doing.

Flighty Finches

Blush

King and Queen

These two finches conversed for nearly 10 minutes from the top of this pine. Discussing the state of their kingdom, perhaps.

House Finch House Salad

Like many of our neighbors, part of our yard's landscaping includes autumn joy sedums. They begin as sturdy, green stalks in the spring, growing green flower heads that bloom into a beautiful red as summer fades (shown in the photo- I had to add this because there's a cautious blue jay peeking out from behind the spiral bush).

These red flower heads, brimming with seeds, are a popular food choice in the fall for our resident house finches. The nearly flat head provides a convenient platform for them to land, and sometimes they just perch there to rest, even in the winter.

Knowing this, I made up my mind a long time ago that any changes to our landscaped shrubbery will not include removing these sedums. Besides feeding the birds they're just really easy to care for.

Imagine my delight when I noticed small birds land on the sedum stalks and drink rain water that had collected in the curles of the leaves.

And I also only recently noticed that when my finches want a little salad, they just nibble on bits of leaves!

Here's one chewing on a piece.

The scars from past meals.

Sunday's Birdservations!

It's amazing what you can see when you're really looking. Today I observed several things worth mentioning. Unfortunately the camera didn't catch all of this and even if it did, the image quality isn't awesome. So here we are:

• The hummingbird feeder I hung in the tree was finally noticed by one teensy weensy ruby-throated hummingbird

• A brown-headed cowbird danced for a female

• A male house sparrow gave himself a dirt bath in the neighbors' garden plot

• It was girls night out as a group of female house finches fought over whose turn it was at the feeder

• In search of some protein, a sparrow chased a hapless moth and presumably ate it (I lost sight of them before the meal happened)

• A house finch happily splashed around in the water tray