My morning stroll at work one day last week was cut short because the field I usually walk through had completely disappeared. Well, it didn’t disappear, of course, but it was under several feet of water. There was no grass to be seen, only a huge pool of water reflecting the gloomy sky above.

The adjacent river, which is really just a trickling creek most of the time, was now a raging, angry force that had spilled over its banks and flooded the land on either side. Heavy rains the previous night, combined with the few inches of snow that had been on the ground, turned a usually serene setting into a foreboding, aquatic landscape.

What struck me most was how different everything looked. Flooding obviously can drastically change a landscape in a matter of moments, but it can be quite jarring when you are used to seeing something every day and suddenly it looks like a different world.

As promised, here are a few photos of the female purple finch, as seen and photographed in Connecticut during Tuesday’s snowfall. She is eating berries from a silky dogwood, I believe. Females lack the bright colors of the male but are spectacularly designed. They are slightly larger and more decorated than female house finches.

If you missed yesterday’s male purple finch, click here.

Here are a few shots of a purple finch I found on this morning’s walk through the snow. Male purple finches are more rosy in color and overall more colorful (and slightly larger) than the more common house finch. Plus, purple finches are way cooler.

Tomorrow, the female purple finch.

Before it gets too far into the new year, I want to take a look back at my birding highlights from 2023. It was a good year all around with birds small and large. Thanks to you all for being a part of another year of sharing birding adventures.

Here is my annual top 10 list of birding highlights from the past year.

10. The Christmas Bird Count never fails to be a highlight of the year. Whether the birds are plentiful or not, it’s always a good day spent in the field with friends. The weather was cold, gray and damp, and the birds were fairly scarce, but our spirits remained high.

9. Along the same lines, I contributed to eBird more in 2023 than in years past. Checklists from eBird are entered into a massive database that scientists use to track bird populations. Millions of lists are submitted, so my contributions are pretty insignificant, but it all adds up. Anything to help the future of birds. Anyone can participate, regardless of skill level. Sign up through the eBird app or website.

8. I watched a flock of mallards at a park in Baltimore while I was in the city visiting my son at school. It was early in the fall duck migration, but something told me to look carefully at the dozens or hundreds of mallards that dominated the pond. Sure enough, three or four ring-necked ducks swam and rested among the mallards. Not an earth-shattering sighting, but I love my ducks and always love seeing them.

Every once in a while, birding throws a curveball.

To keep the baseball analogy going, curveballs aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Once some batters learn how to recognize a curveball, they prefer them to fastballs. It’s just a matter of seeing enough curveballs and getting enough experience with them. You could say it’s a learning curve.

In the birding world, curveballs come in all shapes, colors and sizes. That’s why they are called curveballs. I would define a curveball in this regard as any bird that looks different from what a field guide says it looks like.

Leucism is a common curveball the birding world likes to throw. Leucism is similar to albinism in that the bird appears white, mostly white, or patchy white. Robins, juncos and red-tailed hawks are birds often seen with leucism. That is not to say these birds have a high percentage of individuals with leucism, but rather if a bird with leucism is spotted in New England, it’s often one of those birds.

Here are a few more photos of the bald eagle I spotted at a rather unusual place a few weeks ago. Here’s the full story.