This morning, I got a snapshot of a male house finch sitting on the back porch fence post. He’s a proud looking fellow. I saw the female a minute earlier but could not catch a picture of her.
It’s spring; they’re probably a mating pair and we saw them last year. So, there will soon be eggs somewhere out in the woods past our back yard. There will probably be chicks soon.
Maybe the chicks will survive. I remember during the month of May in 2019, I was keeping watch on a nest of house finches just outside of my office window. I would go out every day to a skinny little juniper tree, part the branches, and snap pictures of the eggs and later, the squirming hatchlings.
One day, I heard a noise like the flapping of big sheets outside my window. When I finally looked out, I saw the biggest crow I’d ever seen, just taking off with all of the nestlings clenched in its beak.
The mother house finch arrived minutes later and searched frantically for her chicks for over half an hour.
It wasn’t until then that I learned I was at fault for exposing the hiding place of the nest in the tree. I went there daily and spread the branches, probably while the crow watched me from high above in the sky.
I thought I learned my lesson, but I didn’t. In May of 2024, a mating pair of house finches built a nest in our artificial Christmas tree right on our front porch, a step away from the front door. The ruddy male would feed the female, who had laid 4 eggs.
I set up a critter cam on a tripod and filmed them for days. Every time I hustled out there to get the camera to download the videos, I scared the birds off. We watched for 17 days. The typical time to hatching is about 14 days. I finally tossed the whole thing out in the back yard.
There are a red tail hawks, turkey vultures, and crows all over the sky. I hope the house finches know better than to build a nest in any of the big pots on our porch. I know better than to draw attention to them now.
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