UPDATE: 5/17/08 – My brother did an investigation on this little guy and we now believe that this bird really doesn’t match up with the purple finch.  For one thing the beak is different – the purple finch has a brown/tan beak that tapers to a point, where the pictures below appear to show a bent beak at the end and clearly a darker tone – it also was a fairly stocky bird which didn’t fit well with finches.  I had originally dismissed the Pine Grosbeak due to my guide’s maps which showed it really was not an Illinois bird, but my brother found some web links which matched up pretty will with the bird images and his book indicated that at times the Grosbeak can come down south a little farther.  So until someone produces alternative reasoning, we are changing the original assessment to the Pine Grosbeak  – now back to your regularly scheduled programming

Today’s bird has a special memory for me.  A month or so back, I was taking my dog out and noticed he was pretty interested in something out in the yard.  I called him off and put him back in the house to go and investigate the cause.  As it turns out, there was a small bird just laying in the grass.  It appeared to be a young bird that had either fallen out of a nest or overestimated its mastery of flying.  In any case, it seemed distraught and clearly concerned about the predicament it was in… not to mention being hovered over by a curious human.  Fortunately, for this little guy (I guess), I’m a softie for animals in distress (no, I dislike PETA if you are wondering – any organization that puts concern for a donkey higher than a human life is no organization I want to be associated with).   I first decided to snap a few pictures since I had not seen this type of bird (especially this close).

Now that I am looking at the pictures up closer, he looks a little pissed.  He didn’t have any problems with me snapping a few photographs and was pretty much content to just sit there – likely pretty scared.  Here is another shot from a little sharper angle in order to get a better feel for the beak angle and reddish crown.

… and he doesn’t look any happier from this angle.  I decided he was not going to make it through the night if he stayed where he was at.  We have cats that routinely drop by along with a slew of coyotes that tend to make quite a racket at night.  I’m all for the food chain (easy to say being on the top), but this was just too easy of pickins.  I went and put on some gloves and located a box to maneuver him to a better position.  When I returned I had to do a little hunting to find him – apparently he could hop around but flight didn’t look like an option.  Once located, I tried to ease him into the box but he wasn’t too keen on that idea.  Eventually I had to nudge him a little bit to get him moved onto a lip.  Slowly I raised him up and started walking towards the tree line to see if there was some notch in a tree I could rest him in.  As I neared a low branch, the bird launched himself off the box and like a drunken fly weaved his way up and down and around and around and due some miracle landed on the branch.  He seemed content and was actually out towards the end of branch that wouldn’t support a cat and too high for anything to jump up to it.   There he stayed the entire night.  When I woke up I think he was still there (appeared to be a shadow out there, but it was still pretty dark).  When I left for work the sun was up and he was nowhere to be found.  Curious, I actually doubled back to see if I could see any signs of a slaughter or if he happened to be stuck on the ground somewhere nearby.  I didn’t find anything, so I went to work with a sense of satisfaction under the assumption he had made it.  Unfortunately, I ruined any karma obtained from this deed last Friday when I was mowing down some brush that had gotten out of control over the winter.  Turns out there was a nest of baby bunnies in the brush… they didn’t make it… I’m pretty sick about that one and pledged to check out any brush before driving the mower in.

So, now comes the hard part.  I have been having trouble trying to figure out what type of bird this was.  Clearly it was a juvenile, but yet it had some color on it.  Most of the books I looked at and the online sites (thanks to my brother Ron for the handy links in the comments of a previous post) indicated that most of the juveniles looked like the female and was devoid of color.  The best I can tell at this moment is that it is a Purple Finch. (Updated… now believe it is a Pine Grosbeak)  Clues on the “purple” part of this, but I as have blogged previously, there are a numerous odd names in the bird world.

At first I thought it was a House Finch, but it indicates that the juvi looks more like the female (lacking color).   I ruled out the Cassin’s Finch due to its common range (more West) and looks a lot thinner than this bird.

Any thoughts?