306 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 pabt i 



The House Finch exhibits, in common with many other birds, a fondness for 

 maple sap, sipping it as it oozes from the cut branches of a spring pruned tree. 

 The only objection my friends hereabout have against the House Finch is that it 

 eats in the spring, leaf and blossom buds from bushes and trees — for example, 

 lilac bushes and apple trees. 



Insofar as the food of the adults is concerned, it is probable that the 

 foregoing statements would apply almost equally well to the city of 

 Los Angeles. However, in an agricultural environment in the same 

 county, where for many years a feeding table has been maintained 

 and sporadically supplied with such table scraps as crumbs and cheese 

 parings, we have never known an}' of the numerous house finches 

 present to show the sHghtest interest in these offerings, which are 

 watched for and eagerly eaten by towhees, song sparrows, and some 

 other birds. Apparently the diet of the house finches in this part 

 of the San Gabriel Valley has consisted entirely of three items: soft 

 fruits, seeds, and buds. The first of these items is seasonal, as the 

 birds are unable to penetrate the skins of the year-round fruits, namely, 

 oranges and avocados, and they show no taste for the berries of the 

 pyracantha and other shiubs, highly favored by mockingbirds and 

 waxwings. On buds their attacks are not systematic and persistent 

 like those of the purple finches during their occasional visits. It is 

 plain, therefore, that seeds constitute their staple food. 



The fruits that suffer most severely from the linnets are peaches, 

 apricots, nectarines, plums, sweet cherries, pears, summer apples, and 

 loquats. Persimmons would probably be equally acceptable, but 

 they ripen at a time when these birds are not numerous in the or- 

 chards. In the San Gabriel VaUey they have shown no great interest 

 in the berry fruits such as grapes and mulberries. The variety of 

 seeds used is undoubtedly great. Among naturalized plants, the 

 seeds of the sweet alyssum and the tree tobacco {Nicotiana glauca) are 

 especially popular. 



The most thorough study of the house finch's diet was that made 

 by F. E. L. Beal (1907), who examined the contents of 1206 stomachs 

 and found them to consist in the aggregate of weed seed 86.2 percent, 

 fruit 10.5 percent, animal matter 2.4 percent, miscellaneous 0.9 per- 

 cent. Excerpts from Beal's report follow: 



Observations in orchards show that in the fruit season the linnet is not back- 

 ward in taking what it considers its share of the crop, and as it spends much of 

 the time there, field observations alone would lead to the conclusion that fruit 

 was its principal article of diet. Examination of the stomach contents, how- 

 ever, proves that such is not the case, and when we find how small is the relative 

 percentage of fruit eaten, it seems strange that its fruit-eating proclivities should 

 have attracted so much attention. But it must be borne in mind that the bird 

 is wonderfully abundant, which is one of the primary conditions necessary for 

 any species to become injurious. 



