yardener logo - click to go to home page
Yardener's Advisor Newsletter: Sign In / Subscribe


Search Yardener

  • Home
  • Find Info
    • Plant Helper
    • Plant And Pest Problem Solver
    • Toolshed of Products
    • Buy Books And Videos By Jeff Ball
    • Watch Yardening Videos By Jeff Ball
    • Nancy's Blog
    • About Us
  • Ask Nancy! (Free Q&A)
    • Ask A Question For Free!
    • View A List Of Answered Questions
  • Free Monthly Newsletter Subscription!
    • Sign Up
    • About
  • Free Videos
  • Want To Help Us?

    • 1) Join Our Team!
    • 2) Donate Via PayPal

    • 3) Share Yardener
  • Looking For Products?
    • 1) Shop At amazon.com logo

Home Page > Yardener's Plant Helper > Essential Steps For Success > Attracting Birds To The Yard > Twelve Worker Songbirds > Finches > Finches Do Bad Bugs

Finches Do Bad Bugs

Finch diet

Because in most parts of the country one or more types of finches may be year round resi-dents, they make a major contribution to the natural pest control system in residential yards. In their ongoing search for food resident and visiting finches patrol your property for seeds and ani-mal protein. They eat a wide variety of seeds, berries, fruits and insects, and when they are raising their young, they concentrate on the insects. Young finches are not able to digest seeds at first, so their diet is insects and caterpillars.

Purple finches prey on aphids, Colorado potato beetles, cucumber beetles, flea beetles, other beetles, caterpillars, leafhoppers and leafminers. They will also eat spruce budworms. In fact, when the budworm population is low, birds will consume 84 percent of the budworm pupae. This drops to 22 percent when the budworm pupae population is average and even lower when the spruce budworm population is large.

House finches and goldfinches eat beetles, aphids and caterpillars as do the young birds.
In the spring, as much as half the goldfinches’ diet is composed of insects that they eat and feed to their young.

Lunch For Finches
AphidsColorado potato beetlesCucumber beetles
Asparagus beetleMexican bean beetleJapanese beetle
Flea beetlesOther beetlesCaterpillars
LeafhoppersLeafminersSpruce budworm





Do you have a gardening question? Ask Nancy



Our Privacy Policy       Contact Us

©2003-2022 Yardener.com, All Rights Reserved
YARDENER is a registered service mark
copyright material is protected by copyscape.com, do not copy our content without permission