Molting

I'm watching some young house sparrows sitting in the tree in my back yard. They're starting to molt and get their grown-up feathers, and it's funny because the young house sparrows all have markings similar to females, so the male ones start to get their adult feathers and you see the male pattern growing in, so they look like half female and half male. It makes me giggle. There are a few new babies too - looks like at least one house sparrow couple did double-duty on the breeding this summer.

There aren't many finches this year. I think they got wiped out with the awful winter, and I haven't seen any finch babies like I did last year. So sad.

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