![]() After the breeding season, they join foraging groups of Red Crossbills, Evening Grosbeaks, Pine Siskins, and other finches. It’s not known whether they reunite with the same mate year after year. Cassin’s Finches form one-on-one pairs to tend the nest, but they probably mate outside the pair bond as well. A female may ruffle the feathers of her forehead, breast, and back as an indication that she is not a young male, which look like females for their first year of life. When making threats, Cassin’s Finches close their bill and point it toward their opponent with the neck extended and the body in a horizontal position. By the time the pair is incubating their eggs, the male will tolerate other nest-building pairs nearby (within several feet). When the female starts looking for a nest site in the spring, her mate starts chasing other males from the area. Light greenish blue, speckled with black, brown and purplish.Ĭassin’s Finches fly with an undulating pattern, rising when they flap and dipping when they glide. The inner cup, which may be just over 2 inches across and an inch deep, is lined with fine rootlets, grass stems, plant fibers, shreds of bark, animal hair, feathers, and sometimes shreds of rope. She starts with a foundation of fine twigs, rootlets, coarse weed stems, and often lichens. ![]() The female builds a loose, rather frail nest in only a few days. Females sometimes choose nest sites only a few feet apart from each other, but males tolerate such close spacing only if one pair is already past the egg-laying stage by the time another pair moves in. The nest is usually near the top of a conifer tree or on a side branch away from the trunk, 15 feet or more from the ground. The female chooses the nest site while the male accompanies her. In late summer and early fall, they gather into foraging groups with crossbills and other mountain birds, often visiting mineral deposits to satisfy their salt cravings. During the summer Cassin’s Finches eat larvae of Douglas-fir tussock moths and other moths and butterflies. They pull seeds out of ponderosa pine cones (or collect fallen seeds from the ground) and eat many kinds of fruit, including cotoneaster berries, mulberries, firethorn berries, grapes, and apples. During spring up to 94 percent of their diet consists of quaking aspen buds they also eat buds of cottonwood and green manzanita. Back to top FoodĬassin’s Finches eat mostly seeds, as well as some insects. They winter at lower elevations throughout much of the same range as well as farther south into Baja California and mainland Mexico. Some Cassin’s Finches breed in open sagebrush shrubland with scattered western junipers. They often live in mature forests of lodgepole pine and ponderosa pine, but are also found in Jeffrey pine, Douglas-fir, limber pine, Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, grand fir, red fir, pinyon pine, bristlecone pine, and quaking aspen. They breed mostly between 3,000 and 10,000 feet of elevation. Cassin’s Finches breed throughout the conifer belts of North America’s western interior mountains, from central British Columbia to northern New Mexico and Arizona.
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