Monday, January 3, 2011

What's this?


This visitor to my backyard bird feeder today looks like some kind of warbler to me, but I can't find an exact match in my bird book. Possibly it's a pine warbler, but the yellow patch is considerably smaller than the bird book suggests. The bird's about the size of a chickadee, maybe a tad larger, but noticeably smaller than a sparrow. Can any of you eagle-eyed birdwatchers identify it? Click on the photos for larger versions.


3 comments:

  1. Looks like a nonbreeding female American Goldfinch to me.

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  2. I was also going to say that it looks like a goldfinch in winter. (The giveaway: the black and white stripes on the wings.) We see a lot of goldfinches at our feeder. To my untrained eye, males and females look the same this time of year.

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  3. Thanks to you both. I checked with the Cornell Bird Labs site and sure enough, it's a photographic ringer for their winter-plumage female goldfinch.

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