Hi Everyone,

I'll throw in my experience with American Goldfinches (AMGO) at my work feeders. For some reason I have large quantities of AMGO's year-round - although the numbers do fluctuate significantly at times - even though I don't do anything special in terms of specific feeding or feeders for them. Since the beginning of this year, my daily counts have ranged from 6 to 65 as a high single-point-in-time count, with an average of low 30's. Some of this variability is no doubt due to the fact that my sampling is pretty hit or miss based on my work schedule (yes, I do actually work sometimes despite the avian show outside my windows, although several folks have questioned the veracity of that statement...LOL!).

Usually, the high count is from a large mixed flock that arrives more or less every day and usually hangs around for quite some time. The predominant species in the flock is AMGO, but there are always a smaller number of Pine Siskins and House Finches mixed in. (Periodically a predominantly Pine Siskin flock will show up as well - they are more nomadic and less predictable than the AMGO's are.)

As to the feeding approach I use that draws these birds...

I have a standard generic tube feeder with a mixed hulled birdseed, a cage-within-a-cage suet feeder and a caged black oil sunflower seed feeder, and in the winter I broadcast the hulled mixed birdseed on the ground also since many of the resident winter birds are primarily ground feeders. (I monitor the amount of broadcast seed and spread only a quantity that gets eaten during daylight hours to minimize the feeding of nocturnal mammals.) I don't have specialty goldfinch feeders or tubes out, and in fact don't feed thistle seed at all. The AMGO's don't use the suet feeder. They love, and mob, the tube feeder and also go in and out of the black oil sunflower feeder pretty regularly, although other species prefer the sunflower relative to the AMGO's. Perhaps significantly, large groups of AMGO's also forage on the ground for the broadcast seed, so that might be one reason why I get such a large group - I've had as many as 50+ feeding simultaneously on the ground with the !
juncos,
towhees and sparrows rather than arguing over the six perches on the tube feeder.

My two cents worth of experience...!

John Tubbs
Snoqualmie, WA
johntubbs at comcast.net
www.tubbsphoto.com