Damn house finches

[cyclonefence]

I put up with the starlings when they swoop in and eat all the suet in 15 minutes because they are so entertaining in the birdbath--boy they love to splash around--but the damn house finches treat the sunflower seed feeder like Starbucks. They perch on *all* the feeding perches and then just sit there for what seems like hours, working on their birdie computers or something. The sweet little songbirds--chickadees and titmice and even their cousins the goldfinches flutter around futilely, hungry for a bite. The better-behaved birds eat and move along, so everyone gets a turn. But not these jerks.

And you know what makes it worse? Somebody comes to visit and sees them out the window, and they squeal "Ooooh--you have purple finches." Almost as bad as the ones who argue with me that the red-bellied woodpeckers are red-headed woodpeckers.

[IA8IT]

1. I share your pain.

[Yonnie3]

2. For a while I fed the finches Nyjer in their own feeder

That worked well for a while but they went back to the sunflower seed one year and turned their beaks up at the Nyjer. I'm not sure why, perhaps there was a bad bag of the finch feed.

[elleng]

3. ;-)

THANKS for the laugh!

((Geese have pretty well discouraged 'my' osprey from using their own, old nest, adjacent to my house, so I sure get your pain.))

[3catwoman3]

4. "Our" birds are pretty good about taking turns.

Why are purple finches called purple? They’re red.

[Donkees]

6. The word originally described a crimson color

[cyclonefence]

8. Oho

That explains a lot about "royal" colors. "Scarlet" robes that are actually purple--what a resource DU is!

[Donkees]

9. The dye color was extracted from sea snails (purpura patula)

[3catwoman3]

12. How interesting. Thnx.

How do you happen to know this?

[Donkees]

13. I read a lot :)

Purple, a shade varying between crimson and violet. Formerly, it was the deep crimson colour called in Latin purpura, from the name of the shellfish Purpura, which yielded the famous Tyrian dye. During many ages Tyrian purple was the most celebrated of all dye colours, and it was possibly the first to be permanently fixed on wool or linen. Because the dye was extremely costly, robes coloured with it were worn as a mark of imperial or royal rank, whence the phrase “born in the purple.” In the Roman Catholic Church, “promotion to the purple” is promotion to the rank of cardinal.

The ancients derived their purple from the mollusks Stramonita (also called Purpura) haemastoma and Bolinus (formerly Murex) brandaris, the shells of which have been found adjacent to ancient dyeworks at Athens and Pompeii. The colour-producing secretion is contained in a small cyst adjacent to the head of the animal, and this puslike matter, when spread on textile material in the presence of sunlight, develops a purple-red colour.

https://www.britannica.com/science/purple-colour

[3catwoman3]

14. Purpura is also a medical term referring to the...

...reddish-purplish discoloration that happens when there is bleeding under the skin. Many potential causes, some of which are quite dire - leukemia and meningitis.

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS848US848&q=purpura+rash&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjczMqm27uAAxUbmYkEHVV0ApwQ0pQJegQIEBAB&biw=1438&bih=787&d

[Donkees]

15. Yes, and 'blood' (haema) is part of the scientific name of Purple Finches (Haemorhous purpureus)

[3catwoman3]

11. No matter how obscure the topic, there is...

...always someone on DU who knows something about whatever question is posed.

[Qutzupalotl]

5. Ever try an upside-down feeder?

Goldfinches can eat upside-down, but house finches can't. It works well to discourage house finches and others, provided you use Nyjer thistle. If you use sunflower kernels…they love it so much they'll contort themselves to get some!

[cyclonefence]

7. I never even heard of such a thing

Thank you--I'll check it out.

[3catwoman3]

10. Quite a few of "our" sparrows, and some chickadees, have figured out how to...

...hang by their feet from our inverted suet feeder. Other just flutter madly while grabbing a quick morsel.