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The House Finch spread naturally into British Columbia in 1935 from its native range in the western United States (Edwards and Stirling 1961). An introduction to Long Island, New York in 1940 resulted in another range expansion throughout eastern North America (Grant and Knapton 2012), and the species is now found more or less across southern Canada, having reached Ontario in the 1970s (Leckie 2007) and the rest of Canada east of the Rockies in the 1980s and 1990s (Semenchuk 2007, Paquin 1996, Manitoba Avian Research Committee 2003). Data from the Breeding Bird Survey in Canada show a large increase in numbers relative to 1970, both in the established breeding population in British Columbia and the new populations elsewhere in the country.
House Finches have benefitted from human alterations to the landscape and are closely tied to human-altered habitats (Badyaev et al. 2012) in Canada, from rural farms, orchards and vineyards to urban city landscapes, especially in the eastern populations. They can cause damage in orchards by eating blossoms, but generally the impact is low (Hill 1993). Significant numbers of House Finches on the Pacific coast population suffer from avian pox (Hill 1993), while mycoplasmal conjunctivitis has spread rapidly through the eastern populations; the latter disease may have caused population declines at the northern edge of the species' range (Badyaev et al. 2012), but the large increase in the national population indicates the disease has not had a long-term effect on the population in Canada.
Environment and Climate Change Canada and partners have developed Bird Conservation Region Strategies in each of Canada’s Bird Conservation Regions (BCRs). In these strategies, selected species are identified as priorities for one or more of the following reasons:
Select any of the sub-regions below to view the BCR strategy for additional details.