Friday, we experienced our first snowflakes of the season and the feeders were quite busy, with many of the birds trying to ‘bulk up’ for the cold. One of the finches got our attention as his colors didn’t seem to match what they should.

Both the House Finch and Purple Finch have been quite prevalent in the backyard, but this guy had quite a different coloring. He has the markings of the House Finch, but instead of the typical reddish purple… notice the yellow/orange. 

Yellow House Finch

One of the Cornell.edu sites had this information: “Xanthochroism: yellowish or orange plumage, usually instead of red. While orange or yellow House Finches are often thought to have xanthochroism, their color variation is actually diet based. House Finches are typically yellow or orange in the west because of their diet.”

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Birding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.