At 08:26 16/9/97 -0700, Irene Wanner wrote:
>Do they stash seeds as chickadees do? The chix used to "eat" as much
>black sunflower as I was willing to put out, then I discovered they were
>shoving the seeds up between the boards on my house as well as my
>neighbors' houses. In winter, they take the seeds from storage. Do the
>finches stay here or migrate?
>

As far as I know, goldfinches do not store seeds. This behavior
seems to be limited to the chickadee family (including those in Europe
called tits), the nuthatches and some jays. In the case of the chickadees,
they can remember an amazing number of cache sites. They also remember
which seeds they have already retrieved and do not go to that cache site
again. They are amazing little birds. Blue Jays store acorns in the ground
just outside the oak forest at the perfect depth for germination. Those
that the jays forget sprout the next spring. Jays are an important
disperser of seeds for oaks. Some western jays, particularly the Clark's
Nutcracker, also store food. In Colorado Rocky Mountain National Park, I
watched Clark's Nutcrackers take peanuts from the tourists, fly a short
distance, bury it, and return for more peanuts. The tourists couldn't
believe how ravenous the nutcrackers were!
Here in eastern Washington around Pullman, the American Goldfinch
stays around all year. In fact, they seem to be more common here in the
winter than they are in the summer. I have only one or two at my feeders
right now. By mid-winter, I usually have flocks of more than fifty birds at
the feeder on a regular basis. They almost outnumber the House Finches. I
only feed them sunflower seeds. Boy, these birds can eat!
Deb Beutler
Department of Zoology
Washington State Univerisity
Pullman, Whitman Co., WA
dbeutler at wsunix.wsu.edu