May 8th was World Migratory Bird Day. A few migratory birds found their way to our backyard here in northern California recently, like this female Black-headed Grosbeak. By the way, Grosbeak “is a partial translation of the French grosbec, where gros means ‘large’ and bec means ‘beak'”. [from Wikipedia]
You can see that on the website of Environment for the Americas, “Bird day is not just a day. Celebrate our migratory birds 365 days a year!” They also have a beautiful bird video on YouTube from a fellow artist called World Migratory Bird Day 2021 | Sing, Fly, Soar — Like a Bird!
For a beginning birder, identification is always tricky! A new bird that I haven’t seen before arrived, so I took a photo and looked it up. I searched for orange birds with the Merlin Bird ID app and found no similar birds, which was a problem. When I looked it up in the National Geographic pictorial book, I found an orange bird called “Pine Grosbeak”. However, the Pine Grosbeak has no belly pattern while the bird in my photo does.
Suddenly, I noticed that the face resembled a House Finch. House Finches are frequent visitors to our backyard but they (the males) are red. House Finches can be orange? Looking at the House Finch in the picture book, the male House Finch is written as also being yellow to orange. And there is also a mottled pattern on the belly. The mystery has been solved! It was not a migratory bird but a local!
The National Geographic book referenced above is the Field Guide to the Birds of North America [seventh edition] by Dunn and Alderfer.
