A Bird Visitor as Well

Our visitors last week spent a great deal of time watching our birds.  Many of our common birds are not seen in Wisconsin.  A frequent question from our guests was, "what kind of bird is that?"  They were especially thrilled to see the Pileated Woodpeckers swooping to the suet.  They had never seen a Tufted Titmouse.  At one point they asked, "What kind of bird is pale gray with brown streaks?"  I wondered what they could be seeing.

Finally I saw her for myself.  A gorgeous leucistic female Purple Finch!!!  Her body was white with light brown markings.  What a sight!

She seemed quite attractive to one of our male Purple Finches who started feeding her sunflower seeds.

Note the difference between the "normal" female on the left and the leucistic one in the middle.  The male has just fed her a seed.  You can see a glimpse of a male cardinal in back of the feeder.

She has been around now for several days, often sighted near one of the males.  Here's hoping they decide to nest here.  I would dearly love to see the offspring.

And so March Madness went out with a fizzle rather than a bang.  The final game was the worst game of the entire tournament.  Our favored Butler University team play as poorly as we have seen.  Even victorious UConn did not bring their "A" game to the floor that night.  Maryland coach (at the time) Lefty Drisell once said of his team, "Tonight they couldn't stand on the beach and hit the ocean."  That applied to Butler on Monday night.  What a shame that a team normally so good could perform so badly.

Too often we get so caught up in the NCAA Tournament that we forget that most of these players are teenagers.  No doubt the game was even more painful for them.  They felt they let themselves down and let their team down.  They felt they let their coach down, and their families and friends.

I think this photograph (taken from the Internet) best describes how the Butler team felt on that awful night.

But the sun came up on Tuesday and life goes on.  A hard lesson in the lives of these talented young men.