Today, while birding along the Lake Trail at Blendon Woods, I saw three
finches, two males and a female. When I first saw them with the naked eye,
I had assumed that they were house finches, but they didn't quite
look "right." When I studied the female with binoculars, I noticed her
streaking was much crisper than what I'm used to seeing on female house
finches, and she had an obvious white eyebrow. This made me give the males
a second look, and I noticed a short, notched tail, lots of pink on the
breast, and a stark white, unstreaked belly. Two other parties of birders
happened along the trail as I was studying the birds, and they agreed that
we were looking at purple finches.
Sadly, I was unable to find the brown thrasher that others had reported
near the east shelter, but overall, the Lake Trail provided a pretty
decent variety of birds to start my 2013 list, including Carolina wren,
eastern bluebird, golden-crowned kinglet, eastern towhee, red-breasted
nuthatch, hairy woodpecker, Cooper's hawk, a small flock of yellow-rumped
warblers, and a flyover pileated woodpecker.
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