Thursday Birdblogging

Picture by and from Wikimedia (really, not the same thing as -pedia)

The purple finch is one that greets me rather often near where I work, and you will note that he probably should have been named Scarlet or Raspberry Finch. But some one was wearing rose-tinted glasses when he was being named, I guess. He is the state bird of New Hampshire, which is very cheery.

This morning Feral Liberal told me he rarely sees these purple finch anymore because they are being crowded out by house finches. Looking them up in Wikipedia I discover that the breed is threatened for this very reason, as the house finch is dominant, also by the house sparrow.

The purple finch migrates from Canada to the U.S. Hopefully it will find new untrammeled places to nest where it will find its own niche.