I’m a strong partisan for the West, with our mountains, prairies, deserts, and generally more varied habitats. But the East does have a few things going for it, including its numbers and diversity of warblers, and its winter finches. Reports of a “superflight” of finches in the eastern US and Canada exist as a faint echo around Sacramento this winter, but we are seeing excellent numbers of Purple Finches and very good numbers of Pine Siskins. There have also been a few local reports of Red Crossbills and Evening Grosbeaks.
Pine Siskin
Image by Ray Rozema
“Winter finches” include several species that show up in varying numbers each fall and winter, plus a few that only arrive occasionally. Many are considered irruptive, which is characterized by being hard to find in some years and abundant in others. The birds will stay nearer their breeding grounds except when the seed crops they depend on are insufficient, and they are forced to search elsewhere. The numbers are most dramatic when a very productive breeding season is followed by a poor cone crop in the fall. That’s just what is happening this year in the East. In the West, it can be more subtle or just involve a few species, while in the East you may have major movements of up to eight species of finches, plus Red-breasted Nuthatches, which show a similar pattern and are sometimes referred to as honorary finches. This can be a dramatic event and sometimes the birds are pretty desperate to find food, but they are also well adapted to this cycle of boom and bust.
Around Sacramento, unless you have a feeder visited by Pine Siskins and Purple Finches, some of this can quite literally go over your head. For much of this fall, I’ve mostly been detecting Pine Siskins by their whiny flight calls. In the past couple of weeks I’ve been seeing more along the American River. They seem especially fond of alder seeds and also liquidambar balls. Purple Finches make a distinctive “pit” or “pik” that sounds like some flight calls of Red-winged Blackbirds, so it takes some practice. As far as I can tell, Purple Finches are more widespread and numerous in Sacramento County this season than they have been in over 20 years. Another interesting thing about Purple Finches: females, with their bold face patterns, are much more easy to identify than males.
Male Purple Finch,
Image by Daniel Brown
Female Purple Finch
Image by Daniel Brown
All About Birds at Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology, has a decent selection of calls of these species and you can find many more examples by searching xeno-canto.org. Check the Winter Finch Forecast from finchnetwork.org for a lot of background on the different species, though it is mostly focused on movements in the East. Red Crossbills and their call-types and cone-specific bill sizes are a topic for another day, but there is good info on the finchnetwork site. Keep an eye and ear out for Evening Grosbeaks, and I’m still looking (and listening) for my first Cassin’s Finch in Sacramento County (there are a few records from past years).
- Chris Conard
Chris Conard is a Natural Resource Specialist at the SRWTP Bufferlands, having worked there since 1997 with a committed team to improve the habitat for Burrowing Owls and other wildlife. For more information on the Bufferlands, visit www.bufferlands.com.