Bird Sighting

I saw a new bird this morning. It was about the size of a wren, but had the coloring of a young male Cardinal. There were red feathers running through brown feathers almost speckled looking. It was feeding a younger looking brown baby. Any ideas anyone?
Rhonda

At first I thought House Finch but there not speckled. :-)

It was very strangely colored. It is hard to describe, It is almost like the outside edge of their feathers are red and the inside is brown. I have never seen anything like it before.

Hi again irish, Maybe try entering as much info as possible at this site and see what they come up with (don't forget location).

http://identify.whatbird.com/mwg/_/0/attrs.aspx

I gave it a shot, thanks for the website. It couldn't come up with anything. Red being the problem. Very cool website though. Thank you!

I keep a list of all the birds that migrate through this area, but yours has me absolutely stumped. Wish I could have seen it! There is some accidental or escape that we saw two weeks ago on SR 13 going toward the Shands bridge. It looked larger than a wren-size though. The color was somewhere between red and coral with some white beneath. Good that I wasn't driving because I would have wrecked the car. I imagine it was something in the parrot family. What was the shape of your bird? Did you see the bill?

Shelley

It was the size of a wren and had a cone shaped bill. It sure looked like a wren except for the coloring. It's baby was about the same size and could fly, but I guess momma didn't want to give up feeding it yet. It was actually very sweet. I tried to get a picture, but as soon as I started walking to the door they flew off.

We don't have house finches at our house, so I haven't had an opportunity to watch them raise babies, but I have been surprised by juveniles that I've seen feeding other juveniles. I've watched older Red-bellied Woodpecker and Bluebird juveniles feeding the new ones when the parent wasn't around. That might explain the coloring. You can see amazing things when you watch birds!

Yes and juvenile birds can be very hard to identify sometimes.

That might be it. It was such a wonderful, but short experience. When I am off Saturday and Sunday, I will keep an eye out and try to get pictures. Always have my camera sitting right next to me just in case.

However, I guess I need to get a little faster.

Thank you so much,