Birdie, Birdie

 I've been enjoying Spring (in between snow storms, that is).  I'm especially enjoying watching all the new birds come in to the feeder, and these little gophers that overpopulate our yard.

These guys are like little brothers - they jump on each other, fight over orange rinds my boys leave out, chase each other around until they pounce and roll.  They're a riot to watch.  We probably have at least 30 of them in our yard.  Most of our neighbors have been shooting their gophers, but I'm enjoying watching them, so ours get a stay of execution, despite a great desire on the part of the ten year old to use them for target practice.

I'm not sure if our house finches got brighter coloring with the warmer weather or if these are a new batch, but they sure have much more vivid red on them that what we saw over the winter.

And I have been trying for weeks to get a good picture of this particular red winged black bird.  Most of the others have red that is only visible when they are in flight.  This one has such a huge patch of red - so pretty!
 

And we had a couple new visitors this morning.  These are yellow headed black birds.  I spotted two of them this morning.

I saw one of these out by the horse barn where our five year old rides.  It was in a marshy area with cattails, and I was thinking I'd have to make time to spot birds there next week. But they were kind enough to come to us :)

We have plain grey finches too.  I'm not sure if these are just the females that go with the red males or if these are a different breed.  I'm going to have to get my bird book out and check.

This is my favorite finch.  He has very bright red - and a bunch of it.  Even on his back, above his tail is red.  None of the others have that much - especially not on their backs.

The ten year old and I are getting pretty good at bird identification. We all enjoy watching them every day.