Home is Where the House Finch is
10 things we want to share about House Finches
- They’re not sparrows. Both House Finches and House Sparrows are common five-to-six-inch-long nonnative birds found throughout Hawaiʻi, but the birds belong to different families: sparrow and finch.
- Males of the two species look distinct, each with his own colors and patterns.
- House finches are native to Western North America and Mexico.
- The first House Finches arrived in Hawaiʻi in 1859 from San Francisco aboard the ship Felix.
- The Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society arranged the importation in response to farmers’ requests to control insect pests by introducing a bird that would eat insects “while doing no harm to fruit or grain.”
- Oops: 97% of the House Finch diet consists of seeds, buds, flowers, leaves, and fruits.
- Other names for House Finches in Hawaiʻi are Linnet, Crimson-headed Finch, Papaya Bird, and Manu ʻAi Mīkana.
- In 1939, several caged House Finches captured in Santa Barbara were released from a pet store on Long Island. The birds expanded rapidly on their own across the continent are now common throughout most of the U.S. and Southeast Canada.
- Males can have red, orange, or yellow feathers on their heads and breasts to varying degrees depending on the plants they eat. Of 24 male House Finches examined at Bishop Museum in 2009, seven were red, twelve were orange, and five were yellow.
- House Finches have a sweet warbling song. The record of the oldest was a 12-year-old male.
