Wonder why your neighbor is hanging gourds up? Or why there appears to be an undulating donut on the weather radar? The answer to both is the purple martin. The largest swallow in North America, male ...

One rainy morning a week ago, I hear a beautiful bird song that I cannot quite identify. It’s longish, sweet and melodic. From in the bedroom, I glance over at the feeders and there’s the usual ...

Looking out my window this morning, I can see about a dozen goldfinches. Finches, in the family Fringillidae, are relatives of crossbills, grosbeaks, siskins and redpolls. Nice family. The birds in ...

In September, as summer yields to fall, most of the colorful birds that breed in our region during spring and summer head south for warmer locales. The departure of ruby-throated hummingbirds, ...

I think there is no better way to start a column about purple finches than to quote Roger Tory Peterson's description of this bird, he called them “sparrows dipped in raspberry juice.” I saw my first ...

The recent heavy snowstorms that created havoc for people in the northern half of the country also may have pushed a group of pretty birds called purple finches to the Houston area. The little birds ...

If you hang a bird feeder outside your home, there’s a good chance that your first visitor will be some kind of finch. We have five kinds of finches in Marin: the reddish house finch and purple finch, ...

I think there is no better way to start a column about purple finches than to quote Roger Tory Peterson’s description of this bird, he called them “sparrows dipped in raspberry juice.” I saw my first ...