Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 09:17:43 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Kevin Heffernan Subject: Yellow Variant House Finch MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I've had a yellow variant House Finch come periodically to my feeders over the last few days. When it first came, I saw it for a few seconds and it flew. I knew that it was yellow, had a large beak (was not a Siskin), was a House Finch size, shape, and general field marks and had two light wing bars. Not knowing at the time that a yellow variant House Finch exists, I looked through the field guides for anything else and the only thing close was juvenile Red Crossbill. I had a straight on look at the bill (not a profile) so I didn't notice anything other than the large finch like size. Since then it has returned several times and I finally looked up House Finch in Sibley this morning and sure enough there is a yellow variant House Finch. Once again, Sibley was instrumental in solving a mystery. I have also had an over-wintering Brown Thrasher that I have seen once ot twice a week. It was back this morning again. Kevin Heffernan Ellicott City kjheff@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================