A Trembling of Finches

The birds at the feeders are, to understate the issue, plentiful.


We have been invaded by pine siskins. This nomadic finch ranges widely and erratically across the continent each winter in response to seed crops. Better suited to clinging to branch tips than to hopping along the ground, these brown-streaked acrobats flash yellow wing markings as they flutter while feeding or as they explode into flight. Flocks are gregarious, and you may hear their insistent wheezy twitters before you see them.


They fill the feeder. They fill the air. They fill all the trees around the house.  They are enchanting, and I can spend endless hours just watching them.

They are joined by bluejays, chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, red polls, purple finches, song sparrows, starlings, cowbirds and grackles -- all jostling with the squirrels for the best seats in the seed 'restaurant' along the front porch of my house.  (I do not want to know what I have spent this spring to buy Nyger seed, sunflowers, and mixed seeds...)


I am told that the collective noun is a "trembling of finches" and I can understand that!