Day 17.318: Feeder birds

This weekend was a good compare-and-contrast opportunity. 

Some of our first visitors were a pair of purple finches:

Male purple finch on a branch nearby

Female purple finch on the feeder

but later we also got a good view of a group of house finches:

Two male and two female house finches crowd onto our hopper feeder

Our largest woodpecker visited briefly:

Pileated woodpecker seen on a tree some way into the woods

and our smallest one came several times:

Downy woodpecker on a small branch above the feeders

This bird, unmistakably a goldfinch, caught my eye because I expect them to be olive colored, but it turns out that although breeding females in the summer are olive while the males are in their canary-yellow finery, in the winter the adults are much more brown. Duly noted.