Early Morning Dance

Raucous chirping brought me to the window this morning, but I didn't expect to see anything. I figured there were babies somewhere and just wanted to get an idea of the nest's direction. Instead, in the kitchen garden, I saw a bizarre house finch mating ritual. The male was hopping around in the beds searching the ground and two females were bevvying for front position. When they got there they would fluff their feathers, jump up and down, and wriggle their bottoms on the ground. They pursued him through several beds before I returned to getting ready; when I looked again they were gone. I read on a Web site that "the female House Finch usually solicits food from the male," which explains the behavior, but the site doesn't say anything about two females vying for a males attention.

While I was trying to identify my birds I found a great site "WhatBird" which has a search feature that allows you to choose multiple characteristics and provides several possible results. You have to carefully read the three portions of the screen figure it out, but if you do that it works well.