juvenile house finch — 2016 — The 21st Century Matriarch

I stopped putting birdseed in our feeder in early July when one of the squirrels got coordinated enough to dump a little seed from it. It wasn’t happening consistently so the ‘squirrel proof’ was not filing totally but enough that I decided they didn’t need the extra food in the summer months. I still go quite a few birds to photograph through my office window. The parent of the juvenile house finches featured in yesterday’s post must have been the birds I saw most frequently around our deck.

This frazzled looking Carolina Wren might be a fledgling from the nest in an old gas grill.

Nuthatches always look alert when they are in their head-down stance. This one was enjoying the last seed I put in the feeder.

There is a male indigo bunting that I see periodically so it might be nesting nearby. I photographed the bird from my office window

Then went downstairs to get a different perspective through the French door in our breakfast area. The mourning dove provides a nice size contrast.

The juvenile cardinal still had some downy looking feathers on its breast and around its head

But its bill has turned the adult color over the past month.

I am keeping our bird bath full of fresh water so I expect that will be the reason birds will continue to visit our deck for the rest of the summer.

The bird on the right is making motions like a chick begging for food – but the one on the left does not look like they will be obliging!

I was curious about some little birds that showed up near my window this month that seemed to have tufts of feathers that looked like eyebrows or horns. The lighting for the first picture I got was not that good – but did capture what I was seeing.

I did some research and discovered that they were juvenile house finches! They must have just recently fledged because there was usually a parent bird around when these birds with eyebrows came to our deck.

Sometimes the birds went into begging mode – probably hoping for a feeding from a parent…and sometimes they did not seem as adept at flying as the adult birds. They’ll gain flying skill and lose their eyebrows in a short time.