Gregarious, Endemic, Locally Common… Double-Barred Finch

By Keith Hutton on October 3, 2014 in Other

Finches are small birds with stout conical bills adapted for crushing seeds. They are found throughout the world and many are popular cage birds. Some have escaped and established feral populations, and others have been deliberately released with the same result. There are twenty species that naturally occur in Australia, and two of these can be found in the Eastern Suburbs; both are easy to identify. Double-barred Finches are very small with brown backs, but mostly black and white. Red-browed Finches are slightly bigger, with olive backs, and they show scarlet flashes when they take off. Both feed mainly on the ground, and live in low vegetation. Randwick Environmental Park is a good place to look for them.

Double-barred Finches are small sturdy finches unlike any other, with short greyish-blue bills, quite large heads and short tails. In flight they appear to have short, broad, rounded wings. Adults are mostly brown above and, in the Sydney region, show a prominent white rump patch that contrasts with a black tail; their wings are mostly black with many little white spots. They have a bold white face with a black border, and white or pale cream underparts with a distinct black lower breast band. Sexes are similar and young birds are duller and browner.

Double-barred Finches occur only in northern and eastern Australia, from Broome in WA to Bega in NSW and casually just into northeast Victoria. They are generally resident or sedentary but may also be locally nomadic. They occupy a variety of habitats with dense shrubs interspersed with open grassy areas, usually close to water, and they occur regularly in cleared agricultural areas, in parks and gardens, and on golf courses in towns and cities.

They forage in pairs or small flocks, sometimes including other finches, of up to 50 birds. They eat a great variety of small seeds, specialising in those of grasses, supplemented with other plant material and, less often, with insects. Their diet varies seasonally as abundance and availability of major food sources change. Birds forage busily on the ground picking up fallen seeds, or they reach out to feed directly from seed-heads of standing plants. Grass seeds are the major food items throughout the year, but insects become more prevalent in the diet during the breeding season. Newly hatched nestlings are fed insects, while older young are fed mainly ripe or partly ripe seeds.

Essential requirements for Double-barred Finches are grass seeds to eat, bushes and shrubs for shelter and nesting, and frequent access to water. They have adapted well to European settlement and consequent modified habitats. Clearing of tall forests has resulted in local increases in numbers, and in the last century there was significant expansion of range towards the east coast and into the southeast Murray-Darling Basin. Double-barred Finches are popular cage birds and regular visitors to bird feeders. Despite trapping and predation by cats they do not appear to be threatened and are considered of least conservation concern.