House finches...to love them or to hate them? Here's the story. They are native to Mexico and the Western United States, but were brought into the NYC area as cage birds in the 1930's. When pet stores found out they were a protected species (almost all passerines are), they released them, and the released birds began to breed. From those few dozen birds, the population of house finches in the northeastern states grew to over 10 million, and they began to spread southward. The first accepted record of one appearing in Florida was in 1983. The birds now breed as far south as Tampa and Lakeland, with some isolated colonies appearing even farther south. The malel house finch's color can vary from yellow to red, with the females seeming to prefer the reddest males. So...they don't really belong here, but they sure are pretty, and I suspect there is not one thing we can do about them being here, so we may as well enjoy them. Great pictures, Kara! Thanks for sharing! Marcia

mine was a plastic tube feeder with plastic perches about 1 1/2 inches long and almost any of the birds were perching on it. I took a hack saw and cut the perches off so they were just over 1/2 inch long. it stopped all the birds except the siskins and finches from perching. Last fall a hungry bear tore the feeder down and broke it, I'll have to buy another next spring. and hang it higher.

Sounds like a house finch. The winter plumage of the Am. gold finch is more olive than browm with distinct black and white bars. Too, I currently have lots of gold finches and strangely enough, there is one already in full breeding plumage! Donna

Thank you all, Donna, you can have some of our lesser goldfinches, we have plenty of them :) They are noisey little guys. Years ago my mother told me I didn't have to feed them in the winter as they 'went somewhere else'. Well, they do. If you don't feed them they go to the neighbor who does. We just love them. On the orange House Finch, DH was insistant that's what it was but he was calling it a 'faded' House Finch :) And a question on the warbler. A warbler is more 'flitty' and more apt to be on the ground etc not holding still, right? Plus this guy was on the suet cake, not on the thistle sock. So I'll label him as a Yellow-rumped Warbler. We did get alot of blurry pix of him, REALLY blurry, but one did appear to show him with a pointed beak, not a 'finch' beak. Just couldn't really be sure. I'll still try for a better pic. Thank you so much!