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Re: Dead House Finches



Hi folks;
>very small birds (like Kinglets) can survive ca -40C
(don't ask how many F is that)>
An interesting tidbit: -40 C and -40 F. are the same.
About House Finches;
Several years ago while taking an abortive run at a Masters Degree, I
designed a study of House Finch and House Sparrow interaction (hopefully the
House Finches won). In this study I was required to do an in depth study of
HoFi's, and these are a few things I found:
HoFi's are (of course) not native to the east, but were introduced to Long
Island NY around 1948. They came from southern California, and are adapted
for a warmer winter than we have in most of the east. Some conjecture in the
literature of the day (this was before the WWW) was that they were able to
adapt to the cooler winters by eating sunflower seed, which has a great fat
concentration. This is directly linked (of course) to feeders. The idea was
that if the feeders ran out of sunflower seed, the finches might not make it
in cooler weather.
This was conjecture in the literature, and also conjecture on my part. We
have HoFi's here, and the sunflower seed is the first to disappear. The Song
Sparrow (who is here year round) seems to prefer Milo, and that is next to
disappear. Nobody seems to like Millet, so it seems to be left for the
squirrels (oops, did I say a dirty word?).

Check out this link for a laugh: http://www.jmbcommunications.com/chelt.html
Happy Holidays all!
Alex Netherton
The Appalachian Naturalist
Asheville, NC
alex@alexnetherton.com
http://alexnetherton.com