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home_and_awaySo, housefinches do A Thing: when they've found a good nesting site, they tend to come back to it. They also, if the weather and food supply and willing partners permit, will breed twice (wiki says more than twice is possible, but the ones I've watched only put up two nests) over the spring and summer, instead of just the once. That "willing partners" bit is the one that's making me smile today.
See, last year, I could ID the male finch who'd taken up residence in the geranium pot because his diet gave him a deep reddish-purple head, neck, & chest. I'd seen other male house finches, but none of them had this guy's shade or spread of colour. But the female...she was speckled dun-brown and would dive bomb me and shout invective when I walked past, so I could *find* her easy enough. But *individuating* her from any of her sisters? No dice. So I didn't know whether the two nests in the pot were both hers or if she had company.
I knew that one male would sometimes have two or more mates in a season and that housefinches among their "household" have little notion of personal space: the two females who share a mate might build conjoined nests and all three adults feed both clutches. But without visual confirmation of more than one female...~shrug~ it was just fun data.
This morning, though. :D
This morning, I saw three adults, two of them speckled dun-brown, diving into and out of and back into the hanging pot. Nobody was mobbing anybody else out.
So for this year's set of finches, there's THAT question answered.
(I'm quietly pleased to know they feel safe enough in that hanging pot to run two concurrent clutches in it. That's a good feeling, considering the real estate scuffle we had with them a couple of weeks ago. They must be optimistic about the food around here, too.)
See, last year, I could ID the male finch who'd taken up residence in the geranium pot because his diet gave him a deep reddish-purple head, neck, & chest. I'd seen other male house finches, but none of them had this guy's shade or spread of colour. But the female...she was speckled dun-brown and would dive bomb me and shout invective when I walked past, so I could *find* her easy enough. But *individuating* her from any of her sisters? No dice. So I didn't know whether the two nests in the pot were both hers or if she had company.
I knew that one male would sometimes have two or more mates in a season and that housefinches among their "household" have little notion of personal space: the two females who share a mate might build conjoined nests and all three adults feed both clutches. But without visual confirmation of more than one female...~shrug~ it was just fun data.
This morning, though. :D
This morning, I saw three adults, two of them speckled dun-brown, diving into and out of and back into the hanging pot. Nobody was mobbing anybody else out.
So for this year's set of finches, there's THAT question answered.
(I'm quietly pleased to know they feel safe enough in that hanging pot to run two concurrent clutches in it. That's a good feeling, considering the real estate scuffle we had with them a couple of weeks ago. They must be optimistic about the food around here, too.)
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Date: 2014-03-11 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-11 08:58 pm (UTC)Here's to well-cared-for songbird babies.
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Date: 2014-05-29 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 10:56 pm (UTC)