House finch at the Arizona garden by Ariana Baltay

House finch at the Arizona garden: A Nature Through Photography Field Trip by Ariana Baltay

    House Finches nest in a variety of deciduous and coniferous trees as well as on cactus and rock ledges. They also nest in or on buildings, using sites like vents, ledges, street lamps, ivy, and hanging planters. They are versatile, and use human-created habitats comfortably. As much as any crow, the house finch is the modern day “everybird” who will live in urban centers as well as in rural habitats, and in barns as easily as grasslands, streams, and open forests below 6000 feet. What caught my eye in the photo I took was the ease with which the bird I spotted was able to grip a pointy cactus spear and sit perfectly comfortably. It seemed to indicate his Zen adaptability, which research later proved to be present. It was not surprising to find him in the Arizona garden where cactus abounds since he eats and nests in cactus along with other plants. 

      The house finch eats almost exclusively plant materials, including seeds, buds and fruits. Wild foods include wild mustard seeds, knotweed, thistle, mulberry, poison oak, cactus, and many other species. In orchards, House Finches eat cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, plums, strawberries, blackberries, and figs. At feeders they eat black oil sunflower over the larger, striped sunflower seeds, millet, and milo.

   The birds also exhibit sexual dimorphism. Both males and females have a small size, a conical bill for seed eating, and a notched tail. Babies are covered with indistinct brown wavy lines and the female retains her blurry brown streaks into adulthood while the male develops a rosy red face and upper breast and a more distinctly lined back, body and tail. The male also has a thicker conical bill with a curved rather than straight profile. 

     House finches may seem common, but in the mid 1900s ambitious pet store owners made little starlets of them, dubbing the common house finch as the “Hollywood finch”, perhaps based on its southwest origins. They made a lot of money until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife officers got wind of their scheme and threatened to collect a hefty fine. Rather than conforming to the laws of the “Migratory Bird Treaty Act” that banned the transport of species to new zones, the pet storeowners decided to destroy the evidence that the birds were ever there. Their method, letting their birds go into the environment, ensured that the house finch would become even more common in the U.S. The birds once again proved their adaptability and became New York finches as well. Soon they populated most of the country.

    House finches are designated as members of the phylum chordate. Chordate means they have a hollow dorsal nerve cord, pharyngeal slits, and a post-anal tail for some or all their life cycle and develop an anus before mouth. The house finch’s family, Passeriformes, designates that they are distinguished by their three forward and one backward toe that facilitates perching.

     Predators of adult house finches include domestic cats, Cooper's hawks and sharp-shinned hawks. Blue jays, common grackles, common crows, eastern chipmunks, fox squirrels, rats, skunks, snakes, raccoons, and household cats are all predators of eggs and nestlings.

- Ariana Baltay