Global Warming? or Aliens?

You decide.

Normally it gets pretty hot here in central Texas during the summer.   So my wife and I tend to stay inside a lot more than we do in nicer weather.  This summer it has been gawdawful hot so we've been inside more than usual.  One of the things we do to pass the time is watch the birds that come to our feeders and waterers.  During this hot weather there is always a bird or two in either the birdbath or the fountain.  Up until a month ago we used to have a pond and waterfall and, when we had them, the waterfall was a favorite spot for the smaller birds to bathe and get a drink (and poop as well; birds are actually pretty disgusting when you think about it; which we don't).

So the other day we were watching a humming bird scarfing up nectar from some of the plants we put in just for that purpose when my wife pointed out some tiny finches that were bathing in the fountain.  Now we often get house finches here and they are fun to see because they have red heads and bellies and add some color to the yard.  This finch was smaller, though, and it was kind of olive green.  We saw a few more of them over the course of the week so we decided to run down to our friendly neighborhood Tractor Supply Company and pick up a sack of thistle seed, which finches really get off on.

I hung the thistle seed up near the fountain and the first thing we knew it was covered with little olive greenish finches.  Then we noticed that one of them wasn't olive green.  It was bright yellow in places.  So we realized that what we were seeing was goldfinches.  That was a real surprise to us because, if you check out this map, you'll see that goldfinches don't spend their summers in central Texas.  Oh no, they are Yankees born and bred.  They only hit central Texas in the winter when it's too cold for them in their normal digs.


We've been pretty mystified ever since the goldfinches arrived.  It's not just one or two stragglers that are hanging about.  There is a whole mini-flock of six or eight females and one or two males.  At first we thought that they might be confused because it is so warm in the north right now that they maybe didn't realize that they were still in Texas.  After all, it is  a pretty big state.  That didn't really seem to make sense to us, though, because you would think that the heat in the North would drive them up into Canada.  The only thing we can figure is that maybe they tried going north but couldn't get out of the hot weather so they decided to came back to Texas because people are so friendly here.  Or maybe aliens abducted them last winter and just dropped them off where they picked them up after they discovered that it is four and twenty blackbirds that are supposed to be in that pie.  I guess it is possible that they are South American goldfinches and central Texas is the north for them.  I think I heard one of them chirp “hola!” so maybe that's it.

I don't know.  I'm just pretty mystified.  I guess I'll open another Guiness and ponder the problem some more.