House Finch: New Family Arrives

SIL Jack asked what kind of finch we had nesting in the arbor. Here is what Birdsource had to say:

The identification of these three finches of the Carpodacus genus can be extremely difficult. Each species is about the same size and shape, each is colored red with varying degrees of brown streaking, and each is common to feeder areas. What's more, the ranges of these birds overlap quite a bit, primarily owing to the ubiquitous distribution of the House Finch.

The picture of the male house finch, courtesy of Larry McQueen, appears to have similar colorings to the one I see going in and out of the nest.

Dragging out the ladder again, here is a picture of the newly hatched finches this morning:

It's off to fill the finch feeder again, so the hatch lings can receive supplements to their diet of insects from their parents.

Finches: Their Diner and Nest of Four Eggs

Look what I found in our honeysuckle arbor today: a tiny nest of finch eggs!

I have been feeding finches for about two months from one of those bird feeder net socks. The feeder sock is about five feet from the honeysuckle arbor, so it is a convenient diner for mom and dad and soon-to-be kiddos. There are four eggs in the nest, and I was very careful in not leaving my scent too near the nest.

Catherine wrote this blog post about wrens nesting in cactus, and it spurred me to get a ladder out and look up into the honeysuckle branches where finches seem to be nesting. Sure enough, there were the pretty little eggs in a wee little nest.

It takes 21 days for chicken eggs to hatch, but only 14-16 days, according to Yahoo Answers, for finch eggs to hatch.

What is hatching in your neighborhood?

Pink Day Lily Finished!

The pictures above were taken in January, 2009 in Auckland, New Zealand. Don't those colors create a riot in your head? Day lilies come in many varieties and colors, and these were absolutely spectacular. Here is a website that tells you everything you could want to know about this flower: The Day Lily Organization.

I had to try to paint that close up picture of the pink day lily because the colors captured me. Here is the project when I was about midway through painting it in April, 2009:

And it was completed yesterday (except for the glazing process), with a picture of the results below. It took four months to complete, what with my busy schedule of a retired diva.

It is painted with oil based fine art paints, and the picture is on a stretched canvas, measuring 11" x 14". Although I like those pinkish, mauve, purple and red colors, I am thinking of painting another rendition of a day lily in golden yellows, burnt sienna and reddish browns, similar to the day lilies in our front yard:


The canvas is prepared and I 'm about ready to sketch out the flower on it. This painting will be my opus, since the size is 30" x 40". Yikes! My husband was kind enough to spend a part of a day building me an easel large enough to hold that humongous canvas.

Wish me luck in painting it. I may be through with it by 2010, Lord willing.