BACKYARD BIRD LIFE HAS GONE HOLLYWOOD. HOUSE FINCH IS A SPLASHY SONGBIRD

Male House Finch - photo courtesy Sharon Milligan

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   This article was first published in July 2003.

 Locally, one of the most frequent subjects of inquiry is a small sparrow-like bird known as the House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus, which averages about 5 1/2 inches in size and closely resembles the Purple Finch.

    Females and young birds are nondescript in brownish tones, but heavily streaked with blurred darker browns; without optical aids, they make little impression on the backyard birder. At this time of year, following what looks like a prolific nesting season, young are very numerous at feeding stations, where they quickly learn the ropes.

    Males are quite pretty, wearing patches of bright rosy-red on their faces and breasts and rumps but otherwise having the same browns and blurry streaks that mark the female. Shades of yellow or orange may replace the male's red coloration but it is not often seen here (it is much more common in the west). Bear in mind that in summer, the colorful males are totally outnumbered by females and their offspring.

    In habits, our locally breeding House Finches are likely to be found nesting in hanging pots, vines, and dense brush. The males have very melodious warbling songs, which, given our mild climate, can be heard throughout the year.

    The House Finch has an interesting history. Until the last half of the 20th century, it was resident throughout much of the west, from British Columbia southward to California and eastward to western Nebraska and Oklahoma and had never been recorded in the eastern part of the continent.

    Because the males sing their gay little songs so incessantly, and because they are dashingly splashed with red, they became a favorite victim of the illegal cage bird trade, to be captured on their home grounds in the west and transported east, where they were touted as "Hollywood Finches" to unsophisticated buyers, unaware of the illegalities involved. My own dear mother was so inveigled, and I remember a Hollywood Finch residing with us in Massachusetts in the early 1940s, when I was more interested in boys than in birds.

    As the story goes, agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, having been clued into the illegal traffic in House Finches, were cracking down on dealers, who were flagrantly violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Rather than be caught with the goods, some dealers released their birds into the wild. That sort of thing was said to have happened in parts of New York and Pennsylvania.

    The surprising thing is that some of these pampered birds actually survived in the wild; a pair was found breeding at Long Island in 1943, and, by 1958 the species had become established, making homes in rooftop gardens in New York City and outlying areas. By the early '70s, this new eastern population of the House Finch had spread north to the Canadian border and south to South Carolina.

    Mississippi's first House Finch records were from a feeding station in Starkville, in January 1980, from Forrest County in February 1980, and, amazingly, in Hancock County in November of that year. Breeding was not noted in the northern counties until 1986 and our own familiarity with the House Finch as a nesting bird began in 1990.

    The House Finch is now a common permanent resident in Mississippi; though we think of it as a "backyard regular" it could be seen far from any source of a handout of seed.

    There is now little or no gap between western and eastern House Finches; they have become established in most of the contiguous United States and made inroads into Canada. Some contend that the House Finch explosion is part of the reason for declining numbers of Purple Finches, especially in the northeast. Here, the Purple Finch is a sometimes common and sometimes very rare winter resident, dependent upon food supplies on its northern breeding grounds. Competition would be at feeding stations, for both "dig" sunflower seeds.

    Next time you focus on a House Finch, you might think of the remarkable resourcefulness and sense of survival that brought it from an unknown to a familiar species in just a little more than two decades.