Just look at that double tail!

Could this be some type of weird mutation – or possibly even a curious, new species, never before described by ornithology?!

A few years ago there was a zebra finch living “wild” in our neighborhood in Northern California (Sonoma County). I always assumed it had escaped captivity, since I had seen so many similar ones in local pet stores. It used to frequent one of our seed feeders in the back yard, along with the house finches, various sparrows, mourning doves, mocking birds and jays, etc. I saw this bird off and on for a few months, but after mid-December I never saw it again. It may have succumbed to the climate, or become a housecat’s prey.

There are also cases of migrating birds whose sense of direction appears to go haywire. In a class I took on field identification of birds one Summer at the local community college, we learned that warblers which Summer in Eastern North America sometimes fly in the wrong direction when returning to their warn weather homes. In some cases such birds have even been known to fly out over the Pacific ocean; presumably to exahaustion and death.

In my 1983 revised edition of Birds of North America published by Golden Press New York, the European Goldfinch is listed as “Introduced and rare in New York and New Jersey; not well established anywhere in North America.”