European Greenfinch

I've been in Switzerland since Saturday on business. Luckily, I was able to squeeze in some birding as the weather was fabulous and the birds were in glorious song.

I flew into Zurich and then took a train for about two hours to a town named Neuchatel. It is located along Lac de Neuchatel, a huge fresh water lake. The image above is the view out my hotel balcony. This is looking across the narrow part of the lake, so you can get an feel for just how large the lake is.

I arrived around 2:00 PM on Sunday and decided I'd walk down to the lake to help me stay awake, since I had been up for about 21 hours, so I could adjust to the time difference. But before I did that, I noticed that there were a couple of small birds flying around in the tree you can see growing in the outdoor seating area just below my room.

When I got down there, I found a pair of finches. One was bright yellow and the other paler. The paler of the two spent most of its time fetching nesting material while the other, the male, just kinda hung out. :-)

It turns out these were European Greenfinches. Since they were accustomed to people, I was able to get some pretty close pictures although the female didn't sit still for very long.
I've identified just about every bird I saw during the trip and ended up seeing about 25 new life birds. I'm in Atlanta right now waiting for my flight to Portland and since I had a couple of hours I thought I'd get my first post from the trip out. I'll post more of the better pictures in the next few days.