THE OOLOGIST 



57 



Notes on the House Finch 

 Carpodacus mexicanus frontalis (Say) 



With the earliest warm spring days 

 come the Crimson-fronted Pinch about 

 the house. They are not migratory, 

 though we see but little of them in 

 the winter. With the first warm 

 weather they begin to look for nest- 

 ing places; and they like to nest about 

 houses, which may account for the 

 name of House Pinch. They are ad- 

 mirable birds, except for the habit of 

 eating apples and fruit buds. 



There was a clematis vine on our 

 kitchen porch and they nested in it 

 a number of times, and gave us good 

 opportunity to observe them. The 

 nest is usually built in three days, 

 the birds working only a part of the 

 time, mostly in the morning. The 

 nest is like the average sparrow nest, 

 fairly bulky, made largely of grass 

 and lined with horse hair. The female 

 does nearly all the building, and 

 shapes the nest with her body, mov- 

 ing round and round as the material 

 is placed. The eggs are four or five, 

 green and blotched with black. The 

 incubation period is two weeks but 

 may be more. One of the birds 

 which nested on our porch was wilder 

 than most of them, and flew from the 

 nest every time the door was opened. 

 Two weeks went by and the eggs did 

 not hatch, and we thought it useless 

 for the bird to continue on the nest but 

 at the end of nearly three weeks there 

 were little birds. 



When the little birds are partially 

 feathered the mother bird ceases to 

 cover them at night, and birds, I sup- 

 pose, do not reason to depart from an 

 established custom. One time when 

 finches had a nest in a small spruce 

 tree near our house there came a cold 

 spell of weather, when the little birds 

 were two thirds grown, and they 

 perished in the nest. 



During the time of incubation the 



male bird feeds the female, in much 

 the same manner as the young are 

 fed. The food of the young birds 

 seems to be always of seeds, and 

 never of insects. This seemingly 

 goes through some process of soften- 

 ing in the mouth or throat of the par- 

 ent birds. After feeding one bird they 

 throw the head back and thus bring- 

 forward more food, till several have 

 been fed. 



In one of the nests of the clematis 

 vine were two little birds with de- 

 formed beaks, the upper side of the 

 beak being shorter than the lower 

 side, so they would never be able to 

 pick up food, and we wondered what 

 would become of them. When they 

 were about a week old we found them 

 lying beneath the nest, dead. Evident- 

 ly the parent birds had removed them 

 from the nest. 



The time of growth, before the 

 birds leave the nest after hatching is 

 about two weeks, the same as the 

 time of incubation. The dangers and 

 the enemies of the helpless little birds 

 are various. Several times cats got 

 them, English sparrows sometimes 

 threw them out of the nest, once a 

 garter snake climbed into a spruce 

 tree and got one, and sometimes, I 

 think, screech owls were the intrud- 

 ers. Cats, however, were their worst 

 enemies. 



Thomas Say, as naturalist of the 

 Long expedition in 1820, was their 

 first describer, and the type speci- 

 mens were secured near Pueblo, Col- 

 orado, as it is said, on July 12; but 

 probably nearer Colorado Springs; at 

 any rate near the camping place from 

 which Prof. James made the ascent 

 of "the highest peak," what is now 

 Pike's Peak. 



Geo. E. Osterhout, 



Windsor, Col. 



