Subject: Re: Purple Finch and Northern Harrier
Date: May 3 10:59:51 1996
From: "M. Smith" - whimbrel at u.washington.edu


On Fri, 3 May 1996, Sherrie S. Hockett wrote:
> Another Palouse update and a question: I had a male Purple Finch at my
> feeder in Albion this morning. I had seen him before, but unfortunately
> did not record the date. I made a table of all my feeder species (13 now)
> and the original date they showed up. I put a check every day that I see
> that species so I can keep track of them all.
>
> Anyway, on the Nat'l Geographic map, it looks like Purple Finches do not
> stay around here for summer. Is it unusual to have a few stay all year,
> or are they fairly common?

Sherrie, there are no breeding records for Purple Finch in Washington east
of the Cascade Mts., according to BBA data. Most are in western
Washington conifer forests, with some spillover into riparian areas of the
eastern Cascades. None in northeastern WA or southeastern WA. Here they
are replaced by Cassin's Finch which breeds in dry eastern WA conifer
forests up to timberline, with a little spillover into western WA along
the Cascade Crest. And House Finches are also in your area, breeding in
cities, towns, shrubby riparian vegetation, etc., at low elevations (say
below 2500' or so). Breeding maps for all three of these species are
available on the Washington BBA web-site:

http://salmo.cqs.washington.edu/~wagap/birds/birds.html

If you know these birds are breeding, double-check the ID to make sure
they aren't House or Cassin's (look for the combo of breast streaking,
undertail covert streaking, and hue of red/purple, etc.) to separate the
species, and then let us know...

-------------
Michael R. Smith
Univ. of Washington, Seattle
whimbrel at u.washington.edu
http://salmo.cqs.washington.edu/~wagap/mike.html