I was looking out the window and saw this on the bird bath today, have never seen this bird here before. Michelle thinks its an oriole, I am not convinced though. Although its hard to tell the beak was a definite orange

Any thoughts??

A Male American Goldfinch.

Suzanne is right on the money. It is a male goldfinch. I have them all the time. They especially like thistle seed. The female is lighter in color-more light olive than yellow.

It is indeed a goldfinch. I have three thistle feeders in my yard and they come in droves. I have to refill them twice a week, they are such a bunch of pigs! I love their chirp and tweets. Here is a male and female on my thistle sock right before Christmas, in non-breeding colors.

Thats what I though too, we have a bunch of purple finchs regularly but I don't remember any gold finchs here before.

I have 4 feeders out, 1 finch feeder, a regular feeder with sunflower seed for the cardinals, a regular feeder with mixed seed (to see what shows up) and a suet feeder which has a regular pair of Downny woodpeckers visiting.

.. your are "lucky" Jen, our Susan in Ramona,CA has four feerds just like yours and has to refill them daily ...

Those goldfinches are related to canaries Mark. They're so beautiful with their bright yellow color.

We used to get a lot more orioles here but very few now. I'm lucky to even see them let alone catch them at a feeder.

I use to have a thistle feeder but gave it up as, like Jen says they are such little pigs! My feeders are a combination of regular bird seed with more sunflower seed added and sometimes some thistle seed added as well (Mombo's Mix). One stop eating for all comers. I used to do suet too but quit as with the right feeder the woodpeckers will feed from them as well.

The only problem is that the larger birds eat too much and keep the smaller guys and gals from getting their fair share. So I have to have multiple feeders. This summer I even have a pair of pigeons showing up! Don't know where they came from.

Decades ago, when I lived in Michgan, we used to have thistle seed feeders just to attract the finches.

I remember counting 23 of them at the two feeders at one time with more sitting on the branches waiting their turns - impatiently.