Last night, another thunderstorm came through and brought our total precipitation amount to an even 6″ for May — fully one third of what we can expect to receive in an entire year! It’s been a wet month after a cold, wet winter.

And evidently, these conditions are good for a several birds we don’t usually see in the suburban foothills of Colorado.

Unfortunately, I just got a new camera body, and it wasn’t set up as I usually have it, so the photos are a little disappointing, all the more so because the birds were so unusual.

I came downstairs this morning and saw a male lesser goldfinch.

We used to have lesser goldfinches covering our thistle feeders, but they haven’t been around in recent years. Birds of the World says they are “often nomadic and sporadic in occurrence.” So welcome back!

Then I noticed a brilliant red male finch frantically dancing around a female, who kept pushing him away. He was dancing so fast that, with my camera out of whack, I didn’t get photos that do him justice.

He did this charming little lean to one side and then the other.

Just singin’ his little heart out.

I don’t know what her problem was — I was smitten.

After a little post photography research, I learned that these were pine grosbeaks. These are usually much farther north/much higher in elevation, living in wet coniferous (pine, spruce, or fir) forests. Well, we’ve been wet, so that might be part of the reason they are courting here.

Just as I was turning my camera around to figure out why it was giving me such crummy photos, I saw this handsome chipping sparrow.

When I used the Merlin bird app to identify another bird call earlier this spring, it said that the trilling call I was hearing at the same time were Chipping Sparrows. I didn’t even know there was such a bird, and I’ve probably been walking by it for years. Once alerted to it’s existance, I had decided to try and photograph it, but it kindly came to me first.

I just hope they give me a second chance tomorrow.