Carduelis psaltria

The picture for today (and tomorrow) shows a male Lesser Goldfinch on the thistle sock. I have noticed that the Lessers here come in a green-backed subspecies (found mostly in the west) and a black-backed subspecies (found mostly in the east). Tomorrow's entry shows the black-backed one for comparison. Here on the eastern part of the Rockies, the ranges of the two subspecies overlaps, and so we get both forms, as well as mixtures of the two. This one is a pretty true example of the green-backed form.