“Purple Finch (male)” by ShenandoahNPS is marked with CC PDM 1.0 edited by ME 
“Purple Finch (female)” by ShenandoahNPS is marked with CC PDM 1.0 edited by ME 
“American Goldfinch” by ShenandoahNPS is marked with CC PDM 1.0 edited by ME 
“American Goldfinch” by ShenandoahNPS is marked with CC PDM 1.0 edited by ME 
Our west coast finches are easy to confuse. In this little guide, I tried to put the similar male and female species together so you can scan back and forth to see the differences. The hardest birds for me were the American vs Lesser goldfinch females. I think looking at the wing bars vs that little white dot below the primaries on the Lesser goldfinch is really helpful there. Also, the Purple and House finch are difficult to tell apart as well without a bit of careful study.
If you are looking for more small birds, check this guide, and if you are looking for sparrow ID help, this guide is for you.
I truly appreciate your explanations. Would it be possible for you to save them as PDF files so we can use them as field guides when out birding? This way they can be saved to Books or Notes in iPhones or iPads.
I will be converting them all to an ebook when I publish my book. I will also put in a table of contents so it’ll be easy to navigate.
This’ll all be done hopefully in May. Thanks so much for the feedback.
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How can we make a purchase of your lovely 101 book as a gift for friends, and have it shipped directly to their address? We don’t see an option online at this site, for a shipping address that is different from the billing address.
You can just make a note in the checkout screen. I’m flexible!