I am thinking this guy is a house finch, but I know very little about birds. I think its a bit soft but these things are crazy fast.

Looks like it. *Might* be a purple finch, though. Kind of hard to tell from this angle.

You are right on, Gary!

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/purple_finch/id

It was a good guess.

I feel a bit iffy giving critique on this as im useless at bird shots, so at least i know how difficult they are to capture!

From a purely photographic perspective though, its a bit soft, and looks like its heavily cropped from a larger image, losing some of your detail.

Its still a good image.

I agree that there is too little detail in the image to make it a good shot. I'm not saying it's easy to make a good shot of such a fast bird - but in this forum it is the photo itself which is critiqued and the photo is too soft with too little detail in the feathers.