At least four, perhaps a half dozen house finches have visited the yew tree diner over the past month or so. Of those, two of those seem to be regulars:
This is Mr. House Finch. He's been eating well, so is getting redder and redder with time. If you were looking from above, you'd note a brown spot on the top of his head.
Ms. House Finch. Same sleek shaping as Mr. House Finch, only without the bright red. Note the dark stripes on the light-colored breast.
Normally they tend to eat side by side with Ms. Finch on the sunflower feeder and Mr. Finch on the thistle sack.
Yesterday, I noted something unusual. Mr. Finch was all alone at the sunflower seed feeder and he wasn't hanging around the food like he normally does when the lady is around. Instead, he was pecking at the feeder and flying off somewhere. After seeing a few rounds of this, I decided to get up and watch what was going on from another point of view. Saw that he was flying between the feeder and the maple tree in the neighbor's yard, something I usually only see our lone chickadee doing. Why would a house finch be acting like a chickadee all of a sudden?
More importantly, where was Ms. Finch? Squinted a bit, scanned Mr. Finch's flight path and saw her perched up in the maple. At this point, Mr. Finch returned to the maple from the feeder, sat down next to Ms. Finch and offered her a seed which she gracefully accepted.
Something tells me that, in addition to food, we're going to need to provide nesting material pretty soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment