The House Finch is a small, slender bodied finch and is a gregarious and social bird and can often be seen in large, noisy groups feeding on the ground or at feeders in your garden. It is common and numerous throughout much of the contiguous United States, southern Canada and Mexico.
Adult Male (spring/summer)
Head is orange-red with brightest orange-red on forehead and malar areas; auriculars are pale grayish. Throat and breast are orange-red with thick brown streaking on flanks. Nape and mantle brown with faint streaks; rump orange-red; wings and tail brown; faint white wing bars. Bill is thick, short with curved culmen.
Adult Female (spring/summer)
Much drabber, with a plain head and brown-grey streaks down the throat and breast. The back is brownish grey with indistinct streaks and narrow, whitish wing bars.
Juvenile
Similar to female adult but more streaked and spotted.
General:
Smaller body but longer tail than other Carpodacus finches. Length: 13-14cm. Wing: 20-25cm. Weight: 16-27grams.
Behaviour:
House finches are highly social and are usually seen in small to large flocks, flying, roosting and feeding together. They like to perch high in trees, power lines or buildings, but they prefer to feed low to the ground, on the ground or at bird feeders or in fruiting trees. They can be aggressive enough to drive other birds away from a bird feeder. During courtship, the female will peck at the male’s bill while fluttering her wings, until the male feeds her, sometimes regurgitating food for her. Flight is the typical bouncy, roller coaster flight seen with other finches. House finches feed on a mostly vegetarian diet of seeds, grains, buds, berries and fruits but they may include some incidental small insects, such as aphids in their diet. At feeders they show a distinct preference for sunflower seeds, particularly the smaller black oil sunflower seeds.
Habitat:
House finches are found in most urban habitats, and do very well in human created habitats, from city parks to backyards. Away from urban centers they show a preference for more open habitats, including farms and forest edges, open woods and grasslands and patchy and brushy wooded areas. They can also be found in dry deserts and desert grasslands.
Information:
House finches were originally resident in Mexico and the southwestern United States. They were introduced into Hawaii and eastern North America in the 1940s on Long Island, New York. They quickly spread across the United States and into Canada and are now a common sight across North America.
The female finch constructs a cup shaped nest in a variety of trees, in cacti and on rock ledges. They are also very amenable to nesting in or on buildings, street lamps, hanging planters or old, abandoned nests. Clutch size varies from 2-6 eggs and the hatchlings are raised on a strictly vegetarian diet of seeds buds and fruit. Two or more broods may be raised each year.
The red colouring of the male house finch is due to pigments found in the bird’s diet. This means that the colouration can vary, depending on what the male is eating. Colour can range from yellow, though orange to bright red. It has been shown that females prefer to mate with the reddest male that they can find. Presumably this shows the female that this male is good at finding food and will be a better provider for her young.
Similar species:
Pine Siskin, Purple Finch, Cassin’s Finch, Red Crossbill, Pine Grosbeak, House Sparrow.
Conservation Status:
Listed as Least Concern. House finches have benefitted enormously from human activities and their population across North America is estimated to be between 300 million up to 1.4 billion. However, since 1994, there have been concerns about declining populations in the eastern states due to infection by a bacterial disease, mycoplasmal conjunctivitis. This disease causes red and swollen eyes and respiratory problems, which can lead to the death of the bird. If the disease does not directly kill the bird it will weaken the bird and leave it more vulnerable to predation or starvation.
Capture Rates
The House Finch is a resident of Colony Farm and the surrounding urban area. An early breeder, capture rates occur throughout the banding season but decline during March, April and May when breeding pairs remain close to nesting areas.
Molt Summary:
PF: HY partial-complete?; PB: AHY complete; PA absent-limited
Preformative molt is quite variable, usually including all med and gr covs, 1 – 3 terts, sometimes other ss (often s6 and s5 and /or s1 and s2), and 0 – all 12 rects.
It also often can be eccentric, with the outermost 2 – 7 pp, the innermost 2 – 7 ss, and occasionally the outermost pp covs replaced.
A small percentage of HY’s can replace all pp, ss and rects – look for these birds to retain at least a few pp covs
During the adult PB, the replacement of 1 – 2 pp covs (usually among the 4th to the 2nd from the outside) occasionally may be suspended (until the winter grounds?) resulting in slight contrasts among these feathers
A limited PA may occur
HY birds in juvenal plumage are heavily streaked and washed brownish with buffy wing bars. Notice the obvious gape and natal plumes on the HY bird in May below.
Another characteristic of birds in juvenal plumage is the presence of fault bars which can be see on the rectrices (tail feathers) of this hatch year (HY) House Finch (HOFI) in the photo below.
The conspicuous growth bars across the tail of this young HOFI tell us that this bird was probably not well fed for a number of days after it fledged from its nest.
These so called ‘fault bars’ are the result of environmental or nutritional stress that the bird encountered while it was growing in the feathers. Groups of feathers on hatch year birds are grown concurrently so a stress that results in a fault bar on the feathers is distributed in an even line as in the photo below right. Adult feathers are sequentially grown so a fault line on the feathers is normally distributed in an uneven line.
Fault bars are caused when actively growing feathers cease to grow resulting in a dark line across the feathers. Young birds begin to grow their rectrices as nestlings and growth continues after fledgling. At this time the birds are dependent on their parents for their nutrition (the food required for the energy and proteins necessary for feather synthesis) but these adults are typically not only feeding themselves but also several hungry fledglings. This is a tremendously energetically taxing time for adults often resulting in undernourished young and the presence of fault bars.
Fault bars can be useful as an ageing criterion but banders should be aware that adults do sometimes lose all of their tail feathers at once accidentally. When such accidentally lost feathers are regrown adventitiously (outside the normal molt cycle), it is not unusual for such adult replacement rectrices to have prominent fault bars like those more often seen in juveniles.
Although House Finches can have a complete preformative molt, in many case it is less than complete. This SY male in May is showing narrow, tapered primary coverts with little or no buff edging, contrasting with the replaced and glossier lesser, median, greater coverts and alula.
In addition to replacing all median, greater coverts and alula feathers this SY female in February is showing a clear molt limit between replaced outer primaries and inner secondaries and tertials (red arrows). Notice the narrow, tapered retained primary coverts with no buffy edging contrasting with the replaced greater coverts. Notice also the contrast in rachis colour between the replaced and retained remiges (primaries and secondaries).