Normally House Finches winter over in this area but for reasons known only to the birds, they all disappeared in early December and are just now starting to return. According to the state Audubon Society Purple Finches winter here but they are cyclical. About once every decade we see an over abundance of them, but generally they are rare and in some years totally absent. I went back and did some additional research on the House Finch. It appears that they are really a non-native species that were originally kept as cage birds. A small number of them were accidentally released on Long Island,N.Y. in 1940 and they first appeared here in Ohio in 1964. By 1980 they had spread across the entire state of Ohio and have established a very successful breeding ground here. What I found most interesting in my research is the fact that the railroads are attributed with the wide spread of both House Finches and the European House Sparrow. Both species were initially released in the New York area. Having been introduced into an urban habitat they were initially unfamiliar with the local flora and fauna, and therefore relied heavily upon man made food sources. It is believed that many initially found the most abundant sources of food near warehouses or food processing plants where grain or other foodstuffs gets spilled from railroad cars during the loading and unloading process. Some of the birds were inadvertently closed up in the railroad cars when the doors were closed and they were transported to distant cities before the cars were opened again. This accounts for why their is an abundance of these birds in urban areas while they are often considered rare in rural areas.

The female House Finches incubate the eggs-maybe she died and the male is trying to fill in? In any case, this introduced species (they're from the West) is tough enough to evict House Sparrows, so House Finches are in no danger and considered pests by many. Still they are pretty and endear themselves to some because they like to nest very close to people.

Finches (except the dreaded HOSP) nest in pots or pine trees, they don't nest in houses. Our neighbors have rows of the short needled pine tree and the finches are nuts over there, so many nests. Regardless of what kind of house you have, a birdhouse should never be mounted on a fence, tree or wooden post. They should be mounted on slick metal poles with a baffle. I would also love to see a pic of your "finch" house. I was at a store the other day, privately owned and they had a house that said finch house on it. I told him finches don't nest in houses and he at first said yes they do and I again said no they don't. We then proceeded to look at all his birdhouses he has for sale (these are all houses that local people have made for him to try to sell for them) there wasn't one correctly made house there. I think after we talked so much he realized how much I knew about birdhouses....and I am sure I have more to learn. Donna

It is not you, that page is difficult to get to. The section you are referring to is on a main page or home page. I cannot figure out how to get back to that home page where the photos of the sections are. When I looked at that section yesterday, and clicked on exchanges and trades, it had all exchanges posted back many years. That is not what we want for it to be useful. The other section I found listed only the most recent exchanged. I will try to contact Houzz for a tutorial sometime next week. I cannot figure out how they set these pages up so I cannot navigate them.. There also should be a way to view the new posts without having to scroll through the old posts. A snipped to the new post is sent in email, but not the whole post.