Carduelis

Well, Christmas is past and it was a lot of fun to spend time with the family. On Christmas day, we decided to record the species of birds that visited our feeders as a scaled-down version of the Christmas bird count. On the 25th, we recorded nine species at the feeders:

American Goldfinch
American Tree Sparrow
Black-capped Chickadee
Blue Jay
Downy Woodpecker
Eastern Bluebird
Mourning Dove
Northern Flicker
White-breasted Nuthatch

We've also been seeing Dark-eyed Juncos and House Finches at the feeders, but we didn't see any on Christmas day.

I've been pruning trees in the woods the past couple of days, and I was thrilled to spot a Common Redpoll yesterday. It was the first one I had seen on our farm, and the second that I have seen in this area. They're relatively common in forests, but not our open fields and brushlots.

The Common Redpoll brings me to a random piece of information: the genus Carduelis is my favorite genus of American birds. Among the American birds in the genus is the:

Common Redpoll


American Goldfinch


Pine Siskin


Lesser Goldfinch


I yoinked these images from google image searches - thanks to the authors, whoever you are!