[Birdtalk] Cassin's Finch Weirdness

[Kristin Purdy]

Wasatch Audubon didn't record Cassin's Finches on our bird count on 
Saturday, so it was a welcome surprise to Jack Rensel to find six under his 
feeder in Ogden, Weber County, yesterday morning. He lives in the count 
circle and hasn't seen them in his yard for six weeks to two months.

I conveniently arranged some yard birding around lunchtime by locking myself 
out of the house and then waiting for my husband to come home and rescue me. 
I was killing time in the yard and aimed my binocs at a finch in treetops 
not visible from inside. It was the first male Cassin's Finch I've seen in 
the yard since early November. Another was across the street in my 
neighbor's hawthorne with a swarm of robins and House Finches. How weird is 
that? I wouldn't have seen these birds had my keys been in my pocket where 
they were supposed to be before I locked the door. Now, that's a 
lemons-to-lemondade scenario!

The coincidence of neither Jack nor I hosting this species in a couple 
months and then both of us seeing them in our yards in successive days is 
too much. Has anyone else seen Cassin's Finches after their extended 
absence?

Today was another two-Merlin day also; one bird was perched precariously in 
a treetop in my neighborhood, tail bobbing like a kestrel as it failed to 
curl those long toes around a skinny branch; the other was on the same old 
power pole across from the Denny's on South Harrison Blvd about 1/10 mile 
north of the Harrison-US-89 intersection. That's the third time in about 
three weeks for a Merlin on that same pole.

Kris