The owner of a pet shop an expert in caged birds just received a shipment of fifty "Hollywood finches" from a vendor in Southern California.
As the pet shop owner unpacks and places the new arrivals in the display window, the brilliant colored birds sit comfortably on their perches. The "Hollywood Finches" are unaware that they are about to make birding history.
The telephone rings and it is a pet store owner in another part of town. He tells the pet shop owner there are two special agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The owner on the other end of the phone from across town says the agents have just come meddling and asking questions around his shop looking for "Hollywood Finches."
It appears the birds the pet shop owner received aren't Hollywood Finches at all. The pet shop owner received House Finches, a wild song bird that inhabit the western third of the United States. Also the law says, that selling of these birds as pets is illegal. This has something to do with an International Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
The pet store owner who called suggested it might be wise to dispose of the winged contraband quickly. Hanging up the phone, the pet shop owner wastes no time in dealing with his attractive new arrivals. One by one the pet shop owner releases the birds through an open window in the back of the store. The surprised House Finches fly to freedom into downtown Brooklyn. Immediately the pet shop owner solved the problem of illegal birds. Now the little brown birds are on their own to make it in Brooklyn.
Now let's move onto the year, 1981. You are in any state in the eastern United States, from Maine to Georgia and west to Illinois. Thousands of House Finches are busy successfully establishing habitat in big city trees, suburban back yards and rural farm lands.
House Finches are not the first birds captured, caged, enchanted and given freedom to fly in the new frontier of North America. The two most infamous of the proceeding invading species unquestionably are the starling and the house sparrow. The House Sparrow, a rather innocent looking bird arrived in North America from Europe and liberated to fly freely in New York City during the last half of the 19th century.
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