Always trying to identify

Earlier this summer we had been pleased to see these pretty yellow flowering shrubs thriving in our backyard and wondered what they are. 

The plant in question is in the center of the above photo, to the left of our new drainage system. The others are past their prime but this one is still blooming profusely. Here's a closer photo of the blossoms.

While in the Native Plants part of the Duke Gardens last week, I took this photo identifying one of the Endangered Species. (click on the photo to read more about the Broadleaf Tickseed and notice the small range, including our part of the mountains!)

And here are a couple of  crops from the photo taken in our yard.  I think we have it!

We don't know how they arrived in our backyard, but we're happy to host them.

In the Fauna side of the natural world, this morning, a bird much larger than our usual goldfinches showed up on top of the hummingbird feeder - sorry the photo was taken from across the room in the morning light. As I approached, the bird flew away.

Norris remarked it looked a lot like the goldfinches.  For a size comparison, here's a photo of two goldfinches on the same type perch - this new visiting bird really dwarfs them!

The artistic image at this link clearly shows the female Purple Finch I was thinking this could be. They do winter in this part of the world and are among the larger finches. It does have the shape and beak of a finch, and only the female Purple Finch seem to have that distinctive white stripe over the eye and along the chin line.  She may be too large to use the new seed feeder we hung last weekend.  (We don't have a photo of the goldfinches using it... we'll have to work on that!)