By Jim Wright

Special to The Record | USA TODAY NETWORK - NEW JERSEY

    Do you have a nemesis bird – one that eludes you no matter what?

    I am unlucky enough to have two nearby for two different reasons.

  The first is a purple finch at my feeder. I live next to the Celery Farm Natural Area in Allendale, and this time of year, lots of folks report seeing them there. Worse, friends occasionally tell me they saw one on my feeders or heard one in my backyard. 

  So I sit by the window, binoculars poised and camera at the ready, eyeing every reddish finch that goes for the Supreme Blend. If the bird's a different shade of magenta, I start taking pictures, download them onto my laptop, and use the Merlin app for the I.D. The answer always comes back the same: house finch.

   Ace global birder Noah Stryker hit the nail on the head when he wrote: “Purple finches aren’t purple, and house finches don’t stick to houses. But that’s only the start of the confusion around these two doppelgangers.”

    When I go online to compare images of the two species side by side, the difference seems obvious, and I feel like an idiot. The adult male purple finch has a redder head and reddish streaks on his back, and I recall something about a white eyebrow on the female.

   I’m sure many birders are rolling their eyes at my ineptitude, but I’m not big on little birds. What’s more, I came to birding later in life, and I’ve found that identifying finches and several sparrows can feel like learning a foreign language. 

     If I could only get a house finch to hang out on the feeder when a purple finch arrives, I’d be in business. But that’s the problem. I’ve heard that because so many house finches hang out at feeders, the purple guys tend to stick to the woods.

  In the meantime, I’ll go by the old medical maxim, “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras.”  When I see a reddish male finch, I’ll think “house” not “purple.”

  My other nemesis bird drives me appropriately cuckoo: the yellow-billed one. Unlike the finches and little brown jobs, this bird stands out. It’s big, and it’s got a wonderful curved bill and an elegant long tail.

  The trouble is that even when they’re around, these cuckoos can be elusive. They’re well-camouflaged, and they don’t move around much. Every spring, I keep walking a portion of the Celery Farm trail where the cuckoo makes its appearance. I return home a bitter man.

  But hope springs eternal. And when I spot a purple finch at my feeder this winter, I’m heading straight for the cuckoo spot along the trail. When you’re hot, you’re hot, even in December.

   The Bird Watcher column appears every other Thursday. Email Jim at [email protected].

Footnote: I did a yellow-billed cuckoo at DeKorte Park in Lyndhurst -- decade ago:

https://meadowblog.net/2014/05/yb-cuckoo-dekorte-now/