Yard birds!

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Yay for spring!  Not that I don't appreciate our year-round birds, but it's great to have new faces!

We usually get quite a few Dark Eyed Juncos, this year they look a little odd to me.  We get lots of the grey and browns (females and juveniles) in the fall, but usually, in the spring, most of the Juncos in the yard are the darker ones.  The regular Junco for the area is the Slate-Colored, but I'm wondering if we've got a different one or two, but have no experience to say!

American Tree Sparrows arrive early, and don't usually stay very long!  Most of my pictures of these sparrows are of the lame, head-down-eating-from-the-feeder variety.  So it was a nice treat to have this one individual that checked out our whole yard, posing quite nicely for me, for the better part of the day!

Here's another new one for me, I knew this was a Purple Finch, but I'd never seen one this color before.  I've been told by the folks at birdforum that this is probably a year-old male. 

It's also tough to get good photos of Fox Sparrows!  They forage almost exclusively on the ground, usually under cover, and move very fast!  This cute guy paused in his scratching long enough for a photo, and was even nice enough to lift his head up! 

For comparison's sake, this is the most common type of Junco we get here. 

Here's the adult mare Purple Finch, what great color they have!  Purple Finches have it in for me, you know...  Nearly all of my photos of the males are blurry.  I have no idea why!  Not terribly blurry, but just enough...  Tricky little buggers!

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