[obol] [Tweeters] rare visitor at feeder (Am. Goldfinch).

[Jeff Gilligan]

Some random thoughts: As is normal, great numbers of American Goldfinches
are currently in the urban area of Portland.  They favor American Elms and
Sweet Gums, and also feed in various birch species.  When I worked in
downtown Portland I could sometimes see from my office hundreds at a time in
the elms in the South Park Blocks. People who stock their feeders with
shelled sunflower seeds get them in my neighborhood (Laurelhurst) in large
numbers. They seem to have problems with the sunflower seeds that have their
shells. They seem much less attracted to thistle seeds.  (One American
Goldfinch on my just completed dog walk was already in partial bright golden
plumage.)  The American Goldfinches seem much more arboreal in their feeding
habits than the Lessers. The two species don¹t mix much.

In some areas of Portland in winter Lesser Goldfinches are more common than
American Goldfinches.  I have only seen Lesser Goldfinches in my
neighborhood twice in almost 30 years.  In contrast, I can hardly leave my
home from September in to May without hearing or seeing American
Goldfinches.  In general, the Lessers seem to prefer brushier areas, areas
that are more hilly, overgrown gardens where flowers have gone to seed, and
areas that may have an evergreen tree component. Where I grew up in
northeast Portland we usually grew a number of large flowered sunflowers.
Lesser Goldfinches (which were then scarce in Portland) would visit the
sunflowers and had no problem extracting the meat from the seeds. American
Goldfinches never were at the sunflowers that I saw.

Jeff Gilligan
Portland, Nachota, WA, Green Valley, AZ


On 1/28/08 5:30 PM, "Dennis Paulson" <dennispaulson at comcast.net> wrote:

> Hello, tweets.
> 
> I've just been watching an American Goldfinch trying (sometimes successfully)
> to crack sunflower seeds in the feeder outside my window. I've always been
> surprised that this species is so rare in my neighborhood. The last one I saw
> was October 2006, the last one before that April 1999, and a few others prior
> to that. The neighborhood isn't any more wooded than when we came here,
> although our yard is, and I have the feeling that goldfinches like more open
> country than this. Nevertheless, I've seen them at woodland edges all over the
> place, especially in summer. So depending on your perspective, common can be
> rare. Or if you lived in Barrow, Alaska, and watched the massive Ross's Gull
> migration past there in the fall, rare can be common!
>  
> -----
> Dennis Paulson
> 1724 NE 98 St.
> Seattle, WA 98115
> 206-528-1382
> dennispaulson at comcast.net
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
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