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, ...

A familiar bird arrives at the feeder, a little smaller than a sparrow, lighter and more nimble. It is a discrete maternal color, a streaky mix of pale and brownish-gray, well-suited to sit upon an ...