Commentary, nature, Photography

House Finches

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House finches, unlike starlings or sparrows (these birds are considered to be invasive), are native to Canada and can be found all over North America.

Male house finch (I’m reasonably certain that this isn’t a purple finch; despite the name, purple finches are red).

The red colouring comes from the foods they eat: the more carotenoids they ingest from fruit, flowers and seeds, the redder they will become. That’s why there’s so much variation in colour and they get mixed up with other types of red coloured finches such as redpolls and purple finches. Personally, I always think that they look like someone spilled raspberry juice on them!

Finches love peanut butter and nyjer (thistle) seed, and if you also have a water source in your yard, you will attract many of them, sometimes 20 or 30 at a time. They’re busy, non-aggressive little birds who love to chat non-stop with each other and are beautiful to watch.

Happy Thursday.

22 thoughts on “House Finches”

    1. Thank you, Allan. The house finches (and redpolls and purple finches) are at their most northern around the Calgary area, I think. The gold finches seem to be more cold tolerant as I’ve seen them in the Territories, as well.

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    1. Hi Jacqui, the house sparrow is quite a problem. The white-crowned and white-throated sparrows are native and look and act quite different from house sparrows. There are jurisdictions here which allow house sparrow nest removal because of how badly they interfere with native species, especially blue birds and purple martins. Here’s an article with suggestions for dealing with them:
      https://www.thespruce.com/discouraging-house-sparrows-386419
      Cheers.

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  6. I remember when we had our bird feeder and I put up pictures on my blog; I learned about the birds from you. We had a lot of those red finches. The brown sparrows were really cute, too. Their brown colors are in different shades and splotches. Thanks for sharing, Lynette.

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