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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