Try one of those tube thistle feeders that require the feeding bird to hang
upside down to take the seeds from a tiny slot. The only birds which seem
to be able to use them successfully are the goldfinches and siskins and, I
suppose, redpolls.

Dennis Rockwell
Kennewick, WA
dennisrockwell at verizon.net
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Bletsch" <garybletsch at yahoo.com>
To: "Jeff Gilligan" <jeffgill at teleport.com>
Cc: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 4:51 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] rare goldfinches


> 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
>> >
>>
> http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>>
>>
>> > _______________________________________________
>> Tweeters mailing list
>> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
>>
> http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>>
>
>
>
> Yours truly,
>
> Gary Bletsch
>
> near Lyman (Skagit County), Washington
>
> garybletsch at yahoo.com
>
>
>
> Machen Sie Yahoo! zu Ihrer Startseite. Los geht's:
> http://de.yahoo.com/set
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>