Lesser Goldfinches at Our Backyard Feeder

This post is about attracting Lesser Goldfinches to our backyard feeder. Why do a post on the Lesser Goldfinch? After all, it’s a common bird and not very interesting, right? Some people don’t like finches, and view them as a nuisance bird, and can’t imagine trying to attract them. I’ve been trying to get the Lesser Goldfinch to show up at our feeder for a long time, and finally succeeded, so I thought I’d document how I was finally able to do it.

We would occasionally put out bird seed. It would attract a lot of house sparrows and House Finches, who would push the seed onto the ground, and go through the feeder in one day. The doves would get the seeds off the ground. Once in a while we would get an interesting bird, but 99% of the time it was House Sparrows and House Finches.

The feeder had a feature that allowed us to change the size of the opening for the seed, and then use nyjer seed, which was supposed to attract Lesser Goldfinches. It didn’t work – It didn’t attract any birds.

Finally I got a metal mesh Finch feeder from Wildbirds Unlimited, thanks to advice from Mark. I got some thistle seed for it from Walmart for a good price. The good news was that it did attract finches, and the seed lasted for about a week, instead of a day. The bad news was that it still only attracted House Finches and House Sparrows.

Finally, after three months, we got our first Lesser Goldfinches, and now they are abundant. Patience paid off! (as Mark said it would).

Lesser Goldfinches are more common here in the Phoenix area than American Goldfinches. The LG is here year round, while the AG only winters here. I rarely see AG, but I commonly see LG (though only recently in the backyard!). The LG is called ‘Lesser’, not because it isn’t as good 🙂, but rather because it is smaller, than the AG. The AG has a yellow back, whereas the LG has a dull green back, or sometimes a black back.