Goldfinches in Autumn

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Permalink Reply by Bosque Bill on September 2, 2008 at 6:31pm

My dad loved his hummingbird feeders even when he became almost blind. He could hear them and see their shadows dart around on the window screens. It really brightened his days.

Don't give up on the goldfinches yet. My thistle feeder is full of Lesser Goldfinches everyday. It just may take them a while to discover the feeder. The American Goldfinches will show up in late fall and stay until late spring when they head north to breed.

Don't be surprised if the House Finches show up and start stuffing themselves with thistle. I was getting so many that they were shouldering the goldfinches out of the way. I was told about a goldfinch thistle feeder where the feeding ports are below the perches. The goldfinches can hang upside down and feed all day long, but the House Finches cannot swallow upside down. That doesn't stop them completely, but discourages them enough to let the smaller birds have a chance.

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Permalink Reply by Izquierdo on September 2, 2008 at 11:12pm

Thanks, Bosque Bill
My thistle feed worked well for awhile but the house finches pecked at it until they enlarged the holes, I guess. Still, it's tough on them to get the seeds. I'd like to try the "upside down" feeder.

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Permalink Reply by Phil_0 on September 3, 2008 at 12:18am

Any tips for locating a thistle feeder? We had one hanging from our mulberry and it pretty much just got ignored.

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Permalink Reply by Izquierdo on September 3, 2008 at 7:07am

I dunno. I'm not much of a shopper, but I suppose you could find one on the net. The one I have is a cylinder with six or eight perches on it, and the holes are so small only little seeds like niger and or thistle can be extracted. I've seen them in wild bird stores, feed stores and maybe Wal-Mart. I may go on line to try and find the upside down variety Bosque Bill is advocating, because as much as I like goldfinches, I consider house finches to be as much a nuisance as house sparrows.
By the way, the last time I bought niger seeds, I planted some and they came up and provided a nice natural area and feeding station for goldfinches. Lots of birds eat niger seeds including, I believe, juncos.

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Permalink Reply by Bosque Bill on September 3, 2008 at 7:39am

My experience is that most of the commercially bagged bird seed these days has been sterilized, both to prohibit germination (so folks don't get a mass of "weeds" under their feeder,) and to make the stored product less likely to get mold and spoil in the bag. None of the thistle that has fallen to the ground by my feeder has sprouted.

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Permalink Reply by Bosque Bill on September 3, 2008 at 7:36am

I don't really have any tips to where to hang the thistle feeder. That's something you could maybe find via a 'net search. If there are not any goldfinches in your neighborhood, then it may not matter where you hang the thing. Certain species favor certain environments for food, cover, etc. The urban landscape distorts that, too. You might stop into the Wild Bird Center (or phone 'em up), I talked to a lady there last year and she had some good info on area birds and feeders.

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Permalink Reply by Phil_0 on September 3, 2008 at 9:56pm

My neighborhood's not ideal (just S of UNM) but lately I've seen goldfinches in two of my neighbors' yards. So they are out there...

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Permalink Reply by Izquierdo on September 3, 2008 at 10:21pm

I didn't read this ("locating the feeder") well enough the first time. I put mine under the eve of the house, right next to the window. I live in Bosque Farms, and goldfinches are plentiful here, so they show up pretty quickly -- I think they may be wary enough to look it over for a day or two.
I have had niger come up from seed I scattered, unlike Bosque Bill. But I've only tried it once. I got a large tow sack from a feed store, which may have been handled differently.

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Permalink Reply by La Fanciulla del West on September 3, 2008 at 8:14am

I still have plenty of goldfinches in the yard and I have two feeders. In fact, I just had to fill both of them in a little over a week. Both feeders are away from any other bird feeding device, but one feeder is near the bird bath. The little finches love having both at their convenience. I hear them fussing as they fly away when I go out in the mornings and interrupt their meal. I do notice that the goldfinches love the Russian sages in my front yard, as do the hummingbirds.

I thought my ladderbacks had disappeared, but this weekend I heard the familiar "chirp chirp" of the woodpeckers and there was the young one--on the nut and seed feeder.

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Permalink Reply by Bosque Bill on September 4, 2008 at 7:34am

La Fanciulla del West brings up a good point. Having water available is a great way to attract wild birds to your yard. I regularly see the goldfinches drink from my birdbath. I've seen birds come to drink that have no interest in any of my seed feeders, too, such as Northern Flickers (as mine sits on the ground.)

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Permalink Reply by Izquierdo on October 3, 2008 at 8:18pm

I normally see a lot of Northern Flickers, but not this year. But the Virginia Creeper fruit is getting ripe, so that should bring them in. Another thing missing in recent years in the middle of the Rio Grande is scrub jays. I was fortunate enough to see one and feed it about 10 years ago, and he brought along others for peanuts. But they haven't show up for about four winters now.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Dolk on October 22, 2008 at 9:44pm

Yep...four years ago our yard in the valley was full of scrub jays and even a few Stellars, but we haven't seen them since. We had a lot of fun watching them choose between hiding the peanuts and eating them. Always a dilemma.

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