House Finches

Not 'Pets' really, but every year we have a war in the spring over who gets the nesting boxes in the front of the house. Over the past couple years these one birds (don't know what they are) won out over the little finches. The other birds are just these plain birds, they don't really have any personality or a nice song like the finches do. This year though, the finches won the battle. They won both houses. Red house finches in one, and yellow finches in the other.

So at first we had these pretty red house finches start showing up. They tore out all the old nesting material and made their own. Then mama started staying put, so she was on her eggs. Finches lay about 5 +/- eggs per clutch. Next thing you know there's babies in both nests. Then they got bigger and bigger until the nests were too small. Time to fledge. Normally, fledging is usually a pretty high mortality rate, but not with these guys this year. They must have had about a 100% survival rate. Now we've got baby finches all over the place! Walk outside and it's like a swarm of bugs all flying all over the place. Everybody is singing away, and it sounds like a tropical forest when you go outside.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

LOL. Good for you. I've got two tall bushes in front of my place and usually get a couple purple finches nesting there along with a robin, the robin she's been nesting there for the last four years, guess she like the location. Though every year, I remind her of our agreement, as long she or the kids don't do their business on either my car or truck they are free to live there, they do it's war. (Same agreement with the finches) So far not a single bird dropping on my vehicles. LOL.

We usually have robins nest in the bush by the fireplace and one of the bushes on the corner of the house. Sparrows prefer to nest in the back yard in the trees.

Those are the only ones I know of that nest right on the property, but there's plenty of other species that sit in our trees and bushes & sing all day, or pass through foraging, too. Cowbirds, blue jays, crows, cardinals, nuthatches, wrens, warblers, woodpeckers (we have two types around here) mourning doves, grackles and chickadees. I'm probably forgetting a few here...
Sometimes we have ducks show up, and there's a Peregrine Falcon nest somewhere close, though not in our trees -- we've seen Peregrines up close and personal a couple of times now (on a branch in the tree near the house watching me grill on the deck, ON the deck railing, on the neighbor's fence along our driveway, ect)

Our back yard's a pretty good one for birding. You're GOING to see/hear a bird within a few minutes, easy.

Got some swallows here they built a nest. Had 5 eggs they all hatched watched them fly for the first time they still come back to nest to sleep at night.

Cutest # ever

Somewhat related. We've lived in this house for over thirty years. Birds nesting in the trees every year. Nearly sixty years ago I lost a good bit of my hearing. Finally got me a pair of hearing aids. Went outside and couldn't get over the birds singing, just stood there for I don't know how long. First time I've heard the birds in 60 years.

Now that I have my own place for the first time, I was able to put up bird feeders on both of my patios. I just love the finches. The house and yellow ones sing almost the whole time they eat. And the little buggers eat like pigs. They’re so adorable. We also have chickadees, mourning doves, sparrows, crows, red winged blackbirds, and a woodpecker. I’ve named some of the birds I see all the time. I rarely see a cardinal, but one magical morning I did, was sitting right on my patio railing. And there was another bird I did not recognize but it was really pretty. The cardinal and this other bird were beak to beak, looked like they were kissing! I was mesmerized.

Normally, red winged blackbirds are very territorial and are kind of mean. I’ve had them pull my hair when I’m walking. I give them a wide berth when I walk. But there’s this one that is actually kind of sweet. It is on my feeder sometimes, and it will trill at me if I’m sitting on the patio. It will then fly to a large tree in front of my dining room and continue to trill and sing. It has not attacked me or anything, so I take that as a good sign, LOL! I’ve named it Reddington, Red for short. Our woodpecker is Woody. There is also a hawk that occasionally menaces the other birds. The hawk is beautiful and I love watching it fly around. I actually saw it snatch a terrified little bird right off my feeder once. It made me sad, but hey, it’s wildlife. That’s what wildlife does. There is also a bald eagle I sometimes see flying a block west from my house. There are big trees around there, and I think it has a nest.

There are robins everywhere. They are beautiful, and one usually builds a nest off one of my patios, in the area where I have my trash bin. The robins like to start singing loudly at around 3:30 AM. I usually wake up around then and listen awhile before going back to sleep. I love the antics of all the cute little birds I see. It makes me smile.

We have a pair of little woodpeckers nesting in an old tree branch out front. I spent the afternoon watching one of them fly from the branch to the feeder at the house catty-corners from ours and back to shove its head in the hole and feed something (or somethings) really fast and repeat ... over and over.

There are also cardinals who nest in the bushes between our backyard fence and the side of the neighbor's house. They keep coming back every year. I'm never sure if it's the same pair or some of their descendants.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Awesome! I love house finches! So beautiful to hear them sing.
Can you try to get some pics for us?