Arkansaw Siskin, Mealy Red-poll, Louisiana Tanager, Townsend’s Bunting, Buff-breasted Finch

Very common in parts of the West, this tiny finch is easy to overlook until one learns its chiming and twittering callnotes. Small flocks of Lesser Goldfinches are often found feeding in weedy fields or in streamside trees. Two color patterns occur in the United States, and males in some areas may be either green-backed or black-backed. The complicated song of the male usually includes short imitations of the voices of other birds.

A very close relative of the Common Redpoll, but adapted to even bleaker conditions, the Hoary Redpoll is only a scarce visitor south of the Arctic. In those winters when large numbers of redpolls invade southward, a few Hoarys are usually mixed into the flocks. On the breeding grounds, this species extends farther north, onto high Arctic islands of Canada. Where the two redpolls overlap, the Hoary tends to nest on more barren upland tundra, where the patches of shrubs are fewer and smaller.

A western counterpart to the Scarlet Tanager, this species occurs in summer farther north than any other tanager -- far up into northwestern Canada. Western Tanagers nest in coniferous forests of the north and the high mountains, but during migration they may show up in any habitat, including grassland and desert; the bright males often draw attention by pausing in suburban yards in late spring.

Rather uncommon and mysterious birds, Smith's Longspurs nest in the Arctic, in a narrow zone where the last stunted trees give way to open tundra. They spend the winter on the southern Great Plains. On the wintering grounds, the birds live in flocks in open fields of short grass, where they are difficult to see well; if a birder gets too close, the longspurs take wing with dry rattling calls, to circle over the prairie before alighting again some distance away.