The Decline of the Purple Finch

THE DECLINE OF THE PURPLE FINCH

Wednesday, September 12, 2007 (Napanee Beaver)

Friday, September 14, 2007 (Picton Gazette)

It was just a few kilometres from where we live when I saw my first purple finches. I was barely in my twenties, and was a relative newcomer to the ranks of the birding fraternity. Pretty much any species was a fresh entry on my life list! It was March and the birds were coming to a series of small hanging feeders that dangled in front of the living room windows.

This was also my first introduction to misnomers. These birds, at least the males, were not purple, but looked more like they had been dipped in raspberry juice, then left out in the sun to dry. Their host didn’t know too much about why they were there, except to consume vast quantities of sunflower seed, and wasn’t sure where they came from each spring, or where they were going, after they disappeared in April. The colourful sparrow-like birds simply arrived every March, without fanfare, and without revealing many secrets.

When the birds first arrived at my own feeders, they numbered only two – a male and a female, and I was overjoyed to know that I was now going to experience my very own purple finches, albeit only two. By the end of the week, there were close to 75 purple finches that descended on my feeders every morning, all of them vying for space at my small self feeders, arguing amongst themselves with excitable notes that sounded more like creaky door hinges. In the afternoon, they retired to the backyard, in a grove of poplars, where they produced an ongoing musical warble that was as natural as the rippling of a mountain brook.

We haven’t seen purple finches in such numbers for several decades. They are declining and bird feeder operators want to know why. Some think the decline was caused, at least in part, to the appearance of the very similar house finch which exploded in numbers shortly after its arrival to eastern Lake Ontario in the 1970s. At feeders, the new arrivals were competetors. In aggressive interractions, the house finch nearly always won. Purple finches, in their traditional spring arrival at their customary bird feeders didn’t stand much of a chance.

The house finch made its Ontario debut in 1972, interestingly at Prince Edward Point, and within 10 years were among the most common species at bird feeders all along the Lake Ontario and Erie shorelines. House finches, natives of western North America, were introduced to the eastern states around 1940, when caged birds were illegally released in New York.

Purple finches were always more common in these parts during spring and fall migrations, than they were as a nesting species. They prefer coniferous growths, so are therefore more commonly encountered as a nesting species in the boreal forests, and only occasionally may be found nesting here, and are almost entirely absent from the extensively cultivated areas of southwestern Ontario. House finches on the other hand are quite at home nesting in a hanging flower pot, or in an ornamentail wreath hanging on a door, which is where I found my first nest, in Bloomfield, in 1990. So, as a species that really isn’t into a set migration pattern like most species, preferring instead to move about from feeder to feeder in loose winter flocks, and has nesting habits not unlike those of the house sparrow, it already has the upper hand when purple finches arrive. Purple finches are treated as interlopers in a territory already claimed by more resident house finches. Purple finches are short distance migrants, wintering not far south of their breeding range. They don’t seem to be into the long drawn out migrations of insectivorus warblers, for example, that winter in northern South America.

So where does that leave the hapless purple finch that some of us remember appearing in such flocks at our bird feeders in past years? Is the bird doomed to extinction, or perhaps local extirpation? Probably not, but we will likely never enjoy the large numbers of past years when 50 or more at feeders every spring was the norm.

Although similar, purple finches and house finches are not that difficult to tell apart. Male house finches are a rosy pink colour and very smooth, while male purple finches are larger and more robust. The females are easier to tell apart. The female house finch is grey and softly textured, lightly striped on the breast, with no noticeable facial markings. Female purple finches have coarser features, are more heavily striped and have a noticeable broad, white stripe behind each eye.

Like most finch species, the purple finch tends to be cyclic, errupting in large numbers across portions of their winter range, which is probably attributed to successes and failures in conifer seed crops. This might explain the alarming numbers found by bird banders in mid-August at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory. Bird bander David Okines said purple finches moved through that area in amazing numbers, with about 180 banded in one week. Only one purple finch was banded last fall! On August 19^th, they watched a flock of 110 going over and heading out across the lake towards Kingston. Good numbers, to be sure, considering their present rate of decline, but also remembering that those numbers were enjoyed at every feeder, every year, in much of our area 40 years ago.