Kudos to Pennie for the identification of this winged beauty. I showed her some pics I took of the scarlet-topped critters and she did the Sherlock Holmes thing in coming up with the ID. The house finches (I have seen as many as four at one time) hang out on the spent blooms of the sunflowers picking the seeds out.

Even more amazing that the cool fact of a new guest, is that according to this zone map, we are really out of their regular area (just on the fringe.) I am thinking that while hanging out at some interstate bird truckstop, they heard about this really cool backyard and decided to swing by to snack on some sunflowers.