Editor’s Note: This is a shell account and still needs to be completed, but is a species we plan to cover.
Cassin’s Finch Haemorhous cassinii (Baird 1854)
Natural History: Found throughout the conifer belts of North America’s western interior mountains.
Appearance: –
Taxonomy: –
Object of study: –
Preferred foods: Mostly vegetable matter, particularly buds, berries and other fruits and seeds. Feeds heavily on tree buds, including staminate buds of quaking aspen and vegetative buds of various conifers. Feeds on seeds of ponderosa pine as well. Sometimes feeds on sunflower seeds at feeding stations.
Flight call: liquid tidilip; Tidilip call relatively longer and more complex than keeup, consisting of very quick series of tones on different frequencies; very distinctive and confusable with the flight call of other finches.
Irruptions: Is an altitudinal migrant sometimes irrupting in numbers down slope into the mountain valleys. Movement in numbers looks to be likely this year.
FiRN Needs: –
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