On Monday, a friend asked:

Any chance you can identify this bird -- or know someone who might?  It was shot in December 2004 in Los Angeles near the coast.

After reading the identifications from readers,  he commented:   I think Louise Riccobene got it right -- Lesser Goldfinch, western phase, winter plumage, which tends to be greener with less black than the Texas phase. 

I went back into old images that had been passed over and found other members of this flock which provided more information and better matches to the guide books and other internet postings. 

Thanks again, I would never have gotten this on my own.

(Thanks, Louise --  and Deedee Burnside and Diane Van Kempen, who  concurred....)

Lillian (Sis) Thomas was nice enough to share some photos of the early days of the Celery Farm's Pauline Oxnard Butterfly Garden.

The one envelope was simply marked "The Beginning." 'Nuff said.

The gardeners (left to right) are Mary Lane, Lillian Thomas, Carol Flanagan, Pat Brotherton and a woman I couldn't I.D.)

The speaker at the dedication is Stiles Thomas.

(Thanks, Sis!)

 After reading my Recod column on the smoke-phased Wild Turkey, Chris Reiser wrote:

Last week I was surprised to see a white headed bird eating seeds on my front walk [in Wantage].

Unfortunately I didn’t have my good camera close by but when I viewed it with binoculars the yellow spots by the beak were very evident-a white throated sparrow.

Sadly, it didn’t return. A nice surprise. 

Thanks, Chris!

I also found an instance of a white-headed House Finch on Feeder Watch, here.  And another white-headed sparrow on the What Bird? Forum, here. I think that makes these partially leucistic, but white-headed is far more descriptive.

My latest column for The Record is all about a Smoke-phased Eastern Wild Turkey that has been seen in Allendale and Wyckoff, plus a bit of a riff of other unusual birds, including an all-white Red-tail that has been seen in Piscataway for several months.

A big thanks to Ken Wiegand for photographing the bird (above) and telling me about it, to Wild Turkey expert Tony McBride,  and to Steven Albert for sharing his photo of the all-white Red-tail (below).

The link is here.

I heard back from biologist Erica Miller, who performed the necropsy on the Red-shoulder that was found dead in Alendale last week.

It was an after-hatch-year Male, and it was apparently electrocuted. I checked the yard where it was found, and there were no overhead wires or other wires within 36 feet, so a mystery remains.

Any theories?