Female House Finch in Nest
My baby house finches have fledged and now the nest is empty.
I was about to take the nest out of the birdfeeder and use it as a feeder again, when another female finch flew into the feeder and did this little movement sort of like she was getting comfortable, settled into the nest—and then promptly flew away.
Maybe it was the fact I grew up in the sixties and retain only a few precious brain cells, but my first thought was, oh how cute, a baby bird has returned back to it’s place of it birth, it’s first home. Kind of like a sappy children’s book-“Birdie’s First Bed” or “Birdie Comes Home.”
I left the nest alone, and noticed the bird was back the next day and the same Hunky male finch with the bright red head I had grown to know over the last few weeks was at the feeder next to her.
It was starting to look bad for my children’s book.
I soon learned that house finches have 1-3 broods a year. This will be the third brood for the busy couple. No wonder House Finches are one of the most common birds in the North America with populations somewhere around 1 billion birdies.
They are highly social and do well with human encroachment, nesting in a wide variety of areas and items. I use plant saucers and bird feeders to attract house finches to my yard.
Well, it was kind of an accident but that’s what they seem to like so I just go with it.
Females are attracted to males with the reddest head, and the truly interesting thing about this is birds can’t make the bright red or yellow colors directly. They get the intense colors from pigment in their food, the more pigment the redder the male. I guess the chicks love the redheads because they know where the yummy food is.
House finches are vegetarians. They eat mostly seeds and feed their young an exclusively vegetarian diet. This is somewhat rare in the bird world.
It doesn’t seem that rare to me, but I’m not an ornithologist, I’m just a chick with a bird feeder.
Comments