Streaky Little Things

Jon Feenstra, PhD

Tue, Jun 15, 2021 7:00 PM

Colorful, noisy, ubiquitous, and an identification challenge? The red male and streaky female Haemorhous finches are some of the most familiar feeder birds in the US, yet still offer plenty of identification pitfalls for the birder.

This webinar breaks down the identification of House Finches, Purple Finches, and Cassin’s Finches — birds different in their habitat, appearance, and sound, but similar enough to cause problems, and occasionally occurring together. This past winter and spring saw something of a Cassin’s Finch irruption into the SoCal foothills, so these identification techniques are a little late, but will be relevant for the next time!

Though differentiating House, Purple, and Cassin’s Finches is the primary focus of this talk, a little time will be spent at the end with a few other streaky finches that occur (or could occur) in Southern California and what to do with those.

Join Jon Feenstra as he helps us sort out all the features of those streaky finches.

Here is a video of the talk: