from the February 15, 2004 Newsletter, issued from the woods near Natchez, Mississippi, USA:
THOSE RASPBERY-COLORED FINCHES AT BIRD FEEDERS
When I was a kid in Kentucky learning my birds, my Peterson fieldguide taught me that in the US there were two look-alike, raspberry-colored species of finch likely to appear at bird feeders. One was our Purple Finch and the other was the House Finch, CARPODACUS MEXICANUS. Though these two species looked a lot alike, in Kentucky there was no problem distinguishing them because the House Finch was a native of western North America, so it simply didn't occur there.

Back in the 70s when I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, one day a birding friend called excitedly reporting that a House Finch from out West had turned up at a feeder on the south side of town. That day a hoard of Nashville birders descended on that feeder, hoping to add the House Finch to their Life Lists.

Sometime in the 80s while visiting my mother in Kentucky, one morning while jogging down a street I noticed a long line of finches perched along a power line. I assumed that they were Purple Finches, despite their seeming louder, shriller, and somehow more assertive than I'd remembered Purple Finches to be. When I got back to the house I found the feeder swarming with these birds, which turned out to be, of course, House Finches, not Purple Finches.

Today, throughout most of eastern North America, if a raspberry-colored finch turns up at a feeder, probably, but not always, it's a House Finch. In places, House Finches are absolutely abundant.

The speed with which House Finches have occupied eastern North America is mind-boggling. The distribution map in my old fieldguide still shows House Finches as completely absent from eastern North America, except for a small area around southern New York where a few birds had begun showing up by the fieldguide's copyright date of 1966.

At this point you might want to go to the USGS pages for these two birds and compare their CURRENT summer distribution maps (BBS map) and winter maps (CBC), at:

House: www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i5190id.html
Purple: www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i5170id.html  

Just look at where House Finches are found today! They are common to abundant throughout eastern North America, with very high concentrations in the Northeast. Also, notice how our "native" Purple Finches are highly migratory, being mainly Canadian during the summer and found in most of the US only during the winter. Compare this with the House Finches' modest seasonal shifts in distribution. House Finches don't undergo dramatic seasonal migrations because seeds at birdfeeders are available year round.

from the June 1, 2006 Newsletter, issued from Polly's Bend, Garrard County, in Kentucky's Bluegrass Region:
HOUSE FINCHES & PAPER MULBERRY FIBER
Behind the old farmhouse I'm in there's a fencerow overgrown with Paper Mulberry, BROUSSONETIA PAPYRIFERA, an invasive tree from Asia.

Ruth suggested that I clear the trees away because they stand between me and a fine view across rolling hills to the cliffs along the Kentucky River to our west. I can't stand that idea, though, because all kinds of critters use that habitat. There's too much to SEE in that hedgerow to cut it down just so you can see...

Nowadays one species using the mulberries a lot is the House Finch, many of whom are building their season's second nest. Each morning I see them inside the mulberry thicket tugging at something. The binoculars show that they're pulling fibers from mulberry stems. The fibers look just like the sisal or henequen fibers we had in the Yucatan. You can walk out to the trees, with your thumbnail dig into a young stem, and pull out such fibers yourself. They're strong, as are the fibers of our native mulberry species.