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. ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]