Dear Dennis, Jeff, Tweeters,

Winter American Goldfinches always get me excited in
Skagit County where I do most of my birding. They
don't usually show up, except at a few favored feeders
(such as at the wild bird seed store on Memorial
Highway out of Mt Vernon).

For the last year and a half, I have put on a big
thistle-seed push at my house. The result was a more
consistent showing of goldfinches in my yard near
Lyman. I have kept the thistle sock full through the
winter. So far, three to four AMGO have turned up here
once in a while, at least once or twice a month, even
in December and January. They have ignored sunflower
for the most part, and virtually never come to my
feeders unless there is thistle. Yesterday, I put
thistle out after letting the sock go empty for nearly
a week, and goldfinches showed up within an hour!

One problem with my thistle push has been that the
other birds seem to be getting a taste for thistle.
Juncoes have been sampling it now and then. Worse, lll
summer long the Red-winged Blackbirds poked at my
tatty thistle sock, devouring most of it. In fact, if
there is a "pest species" at my feeder, from my
perspective it is more the RWBL than the Starling. The
latter make only rare visits to the feeders
themselves, preferring to decimate my apples instead.
However, I still enjoy hearing the "Ogle-eee-gloo" of
the RWBL!

Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch




--- Jeff Gilligan <jeffgill at teleport.com> schrieb:

> 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 don?t 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
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Tweeters mailing list
> > Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> >
>
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>
>
> > _______________________________________________
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>
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>



Yours truly,

Gary Bletsch

near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington

garybletsch at yahoo.com



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