Jill Smith of Kents Store has had a strange visitor at her feeder in recent weeks. She wonders if there is such a thing as a blonde finch.
“This finch has been coming to my feeders for two weeks now. He’s more blonde than white. When the picture is enlarged, I can see a bit of pink-red under his wing. Both house finches and red finches (purple) come to the feeders, and I don’t know which he is but it’s fun to see him, I think maybe that red area under his wing indicates he’s a red finch (“purple”). He seems to be a loner, but will share the feeder trays with other birds as well as the flock of mixed finches that live here.”
Jill, my thoughts are that this is an albino house finch, probably a male since they have a touch of red on them. The beak looks similar to that of a common house finch.
Jill has also been having predator problems.
“A dove-size American Kestrel showed up in a tree near a feeder yesterday. I scared him away with a starter pistol, but he’s got a feast of tasty morsels here so he probably won’t leave. And also I have young bantams that he might be able to carry away. But I’ll keep making noise with that starter pistol!”
“Something has also carried away two of my adult ducks out of my 50 by 50 foot pen with 5 foot fencing. They seem pretty heavy for a hawk to carry off and I’m wondering if a coyote could scale that fence, but seems he would have come back. It’s been a month since the ducks vanished and these ducks (Welsh Harlequins) can’t fly.”
“We have strung surveyor’s tape back and forth across the top of our poultry pen so as to create an obstacle course for a bird of prey. This will suffice until we can install the netting we have. I hate it when something kills one of my birds – songbirds or poultry birds.”
My guess, Jill, is either a red tailed hawk or a raccoon is the duck thief.