Tag Archives | finches

Birds of Northern California

By Larry Jordan on September 5, 2021 in

Bald Eagle Screaming

Our webmaster, Larry Jordan, will be offering “The Birds of Northern California” as our September presentation. Larry was monitoring nest boxes back in 2008 when he joined the Wintu Audubon Society. He also joined the California Bluebird Recovery Program as the Shasta County Coordinator around the same time. With the help of our Audubon members, and others, we now monitor over 70 nest boxes in Shasta County!

Larry actually became interested in birds back in 2007 and started his blog – “The Birders Report.” When he started the blog he had no way to take photos for his postings so he tracked down some of the best bird photogs he could find and asked for permission to use their photos. By the summer of 2008 he was taking his own photos for the blog. This presentation is basically a slide show of over 300 of his photos. We will be discussing bird identification and any other birding topics that come up with audience participation.

Birds of Northern California: Sep 8, 2021 07:00 PM Pacific Time
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Lawrence’s Goldfinch: Feathered Wealth

By Dan Greaney on April 24, 2021 in BirdWords

Male Lawrence’s Goldfinch

Gold comes in many forms–in nuggets, flakes, and veins. It also comes in birds.

One of the cutest little finches has got to be the Lawrence’s goldfinch. It’s gold is not the brilliant blaze of an American goldfinch, an almost neon beauty, but rather more subdued, with just wing and breast patches of yellow in its mostly-gray feathering. Not much longer than your longest finger, this little lemon freshet of song exuberantly trills, buzzes, chirps, and tweets wherever it is; and right now, it is here.

Core Lawrence’s goldfinch country is along coastal California for about 150 miles north and south of San Diego. In winter some will explore across the arid southwest as far east as El Paso. In spring some will flutter north as far as Redding.

Here they feast on the bounty of spring wildflower seeds, packed with proteins and solar energy locked in by the plants. A goldfinch favorite is fiddlenecks, whose golden blooms deck our oak savannah meadows. The lucky observer will see a goldfinch perched right on the flimsy flower stalk, riding it tipsily as she reaches into the flower cup for breakfast.

Fiddleneck

Wherever they roam, Lawrence’s goldfinches customarily travel in flocks and, like many finches, often wander nomadically. When settling down to nest, they invariably select a building site near a water source. Along a spring rivulet through a flowered meadow is perfect. There the flock begins to break up as nesting pairs form, although they often choose to nest in a sort of neighborhood.

Lawrence’s Goldfinch Female

Courtship includes perching close to each other, calling, and then beak-touching, wing-fluttering, singing, and feeding. Mated pairs continue much of their courting behavior. She builds a nest of soft plant parts, fur, and feathers, typically about ten feet above ground, and there lays her handful of eggs. She tends them assiduously, hiding them beneath her subdued coloring, keeping them close to her warmth, almost never leaving. Her little mate defends the area close around the nest, and brings her food, supporting her dedicated incubation. When she does leave the nest, he assumes incubation duties.

Lawrence’s Goldfinch Nest

Both parents gather insects to feed their helpless young, and then, if all goes well, reform their flocks to roam the meadows of their west-coast world. As home to these little finches, California is indeed the Golden State.

House Finches: Loud and Brown and Red All Over

By Dan Greaney on August 29, 2020 in Birds, BirdWords

Male and Female House Finches at Feeder

If you have a bird feeder in the continental United States you have almost certainly been visited by house finches. On both sides of the Mississippi their hungry flocks coat feeders like displays of cherry and root beer lollipops. They park themselves at providential feeding ports or flutter at their neighbors to win better ones. Off the feeders, they are singers who greet mornings with ubiquitous cheery notes, mixing reedy discord with melodious clarity, any time of year. They seem perfectly comfortable making our houses their homes.

House finches fledge from the nest dressed in brown, heavily streaked on their undersides. But as they molt, the males develop a bright red wash over their head, breast, and rump. Young females, too, may briefly wear red on their rumps. As adults, females prefer brightly colored males.

Male House Finch

Bright colors, however, are not genetically inherited. Like most birds, finches can’t actually make red or yellow pigment. Rather, these molting males incorporate pigments from the foods they eat. In addition to black oil sunflower seeds at feeders, they savor a variety of fruits and vegetables that contain the carotenoids–yellows, reds, and purples–that they absorb into feather-paint.

House Finch Male courtesy Kevin Gill creative commons – Click on photo for full sized image!

Because their food varies geographically, male finches in some areas will wear, instead of red feathers, a more orange or even yellow hue. Further, because the birds don’t migrate, you may be establishing a particular finch color in your neighborhood with your local blend of fruit trees, berries, and vegetable gardens.

Female House Finch

The males, no matter their brightness, are famous for singing exuberantly near their mates while the female does the work of nest-building, laying eggs, and incubating them. He may bring food to his mate during this period, and fully assists in tending their nestlings. The system works for them: house finches lay 2-6 eggs in each clutch, and will clutch as many as six times a year. With human help they have spread far and wide.

House Finch Nest with Eggs

Native to the western US and Mexico, these desert-lovers were introduced to New York in 1940. From there they expanded quickly throughout the east, substantially replacing the purple finch of the declining eastern forests. Before conquering the east they were introduced into Oahu, and became abundant throughout Hawaii over a century ago.

House Finch Nestlings

Hawaiian birds are famously fitted to particular plants or lifestyles, and have not done well as their world has changed. House finches, on the other hand, are generalists, typical of birds that thrive in new situations. They nest freely in not just their traditional western scrub and cacti but now in shrubs, trees, hanging plant-pots, on building ledges, or over porch lights. They readily flock to feeders when their fields of seeds are transformed. Strung wires serve for their singing posts. House finches roll with the punches, and that has allowed them to prosper.

It’s Parenting Season

By Dan Greaney on April 28, 2018 in BirdWords

Black-headed Grosbeak Male

It’s spring, and the busier the birds and bees are, the better it is for all of us. Part of that busy-ness has to be raising offspring.

Birds take on rearing their children with all the variety and flair of feathers. Many young birds are brought up in two-parent nests; others just by mom, some just by dad; some are raised by foster parents; still others are grouped into “it takes a village” scenarios. There are numerous child-rearing styles. But no young bird prospers without substantial parenting in some form.

Black-headed Grosbeak Male Feeding Young

Billions of aspiring avian moms and dads are in this child-raising season right now. Most songbird pairs share their nesting duties. Typically, the female incubates and turns the eggs, and quietly chirps to the young, who learn her voice before they hatch. Males in some species spell their mates on the nest, but more often do guard duty, dive-bombing or distracting predators. Both parents feed the hatchlings, hunting down hundreds of insects and making scores of feeding visits to the nest every day. When the fledglings take wing, the male often shepherds them, while mom perhaps begins a second or even third nest.

Black-headed Grosbeak Female

Black-headed grosbeaks, colorful, big-billed birds, take the sharing of nest duties a notch or two farther than most species. When a dangerous jay or neighborhood cat approaches, the female readily joins her mate in harassing the predator, attempting to drive it from their vulnerable young. On his part, the male, with rare egalitarianism, undertakes an even share of egg incubation and nestling-warming. More noisily than his mate, he nests with what seems foolhardy flair; he sings loudly right from the nest, as if he can’t contain his proud papa-hood.

Black-headed Grosbeak Juvenile

Unike the precocial ready-to-go chicks of turkeys, ducks and quail, hatchling grosbeaks are altricial—blind, naked, and helpless. Within two weeks, however, under their parents’ relentless feeding and guardianship, the babies are full grown and feathered, ready to try their wings.

Like so many of our nesting birds, grosbeaks are travelers, wintering in Mexico and nesting as far north as British Columbia. Like robins, they have adapted effectively to suburbs and parks. They prefer to nest near water where both trees and brush offer cover. The females weave loose nests, usually on outer branches no higher than a second story window. Both the male and female sing profusely, a tune and tone frequently likened to that of a tipsy robin. His song is especially loud and clear, waltzing through the woods any time of day.

These singers of the American West dine on seeds, insects, and fruit, happily foraging high above us mere walklings. They are, however, happy to descend to our level to empty our feeders of sunflower seeds. There we can enjoy their burnt orange plumage and oddly hefty bills.

North State Gold

By Dan Greaney on December 31, 2017 in BirdWords

Lesser Goldfinch Male

Nature offers relentless beauty, free—not for the taking, but still for enrichment. One of this season’s beauties is goldfinches.

If you hang a feeder with thistle seed out your window, then a dozen or more of these lemon cuties may well deck the twigs nearby. They’re tiny, just elongated ping-pong balls, but on a chill winter morning they can turn bare branches into a Christmas tree.

The birds are known as Lesser Goldfinches. “Lesser” because they are smaller than their cousin American Goldfinches, and because in summer the cousins have more stunningly bright plumage. But in winter the larger birds lose their brilliance, turning an amber tan, while the lesser goldfinches continue to shine.

As is common in birds, the males are the prettier ones. Their wings are black with small flashes of white, and they wear smooth black caps. Their greenish backs melt into bright yellow undersides. The females dress in similar colors, but muted and without the hat.

It is uncommon to see a solitary goldfinch. They are gregarious, hanging out together like teens at the mall, and filling the air with their wheezy chittering and trills. In their native western US and Mexico, they can be seen wherever the small seeds they thrive on are abundant. They scour sycamore pods high in city treetops; they flock through weedy lots and fields; and they congregate at feeders. Development does not seem to have reduced the presence of weeds or seeds, and the goldfinches are prospering.

Our North State climate is temperate enough that the goldfinches out your winter window will stay in the neighborhood for their spring nesting. Finches are singers, and a male will twitter and tweet until a female succumbs to his melody and allows him to perch by her. He will eventually begin feeding her, a consideration he will continue as she selects a nest site and does the work of construction. She is practical in this task, weaving her grassy cup in a leafy tree or shrub and lining it with fluff from flora or fauna, making a soft, warm bed for the naked nestlings.

The nest is usually just 4-8 feet off the ground. Keeping it low facilitates his food delivery to her while she incubates their eggs, and later, their exhaustive efforts to fill the bottomless pits of their annual handful of children. In under two weeks of incubation, the young hatch out scrawny and helpless, but strong enough to demand that incessant deliveries of seeds and insects be gathered from the neighborhood and fluttered up to them. In less than two weeks more they will be as big as their parents, feathered, and flapping awkwardly from the nest.

Lesser Goldfinch Female with Nestlings

After a little more tending, the weary parents can take a break. Their energetic young flutter on, replenishing the local flurry of color and song, continuing the persistent beauty of the natural world.

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Tag Archives | finches