My wife told me about spotting a new bird at our feeder this morning. She birds too but said she didn't quite know what this one was. So we spent some time going back and forth with her giving a description and me showing her a page from Sibley's of what I thought it might be. She said it had yellow on its head so I showed her a Kinglet. She said the yellow was on its chest too so I showed her a Yellow-rumped Warbler. She said the yellow was more drab and there were brown streaks on the underside. So I showed her a Pine Siskin. No, no, no, no.

We went through every yellow bird in Sibley's with no match.

Then this afternoon we stood at the kitchen window and watched as a House Finch flew to the feeder. Sure enough he was yellow where they're normally red. I hadn't seen one of those before so it never occurred to me to consider a House Finch in my list of possible yellow birds.

Go figure.

Jeremy
Kenmore, WA

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