A question was raised yesterday by EMB whether the “purple finches” patronizing my bird feeder are truly purple finches or “house finches.” I don’t know. I looked up both candidates on the internet and in my bird book. In some cases my customers resemble one and in some cases the other. We have a lot of dense brush nearby in addition to a large canebrake. We’re blessed with a lot of birds! There are dozens of cardinals. They come and go all day, but they’re always the last to leave the party. They ritually return en masse in deep twilight, after the other birds have staggered home. So dependable and noticeable is the cardinals’ last-call that we have dubbed this moment “the cardinal hour.” Then, they favor the canebrake for sleeping it off.