On a recent visit to Mom Wells’ place in Damariscotta, we were struck by the numbers of finches at her backyard feeders. It’s easy to think of finches as winter birds, but here at the height of summer were loads of purple finches, house finches and American goldfinches.

The purple finches were mostly young birds that had fledged over the summer and sported the brown and white plumage of their mothers that both sexes share as youngsters, sometimes apparently even into their first spring. On many an occasion we have heard a boldly singing purple finch in spring that we expected to see was a bright, rosy-hued adult male, only to find that the boisterous songster was female-plumaged.

Adding more complexity to the situation is that in many species of finches and related birds, females, not just the males, sing. Typically, though, the song is different, sometimes simpler, and not heard as frequently as is the male’s. As far as we know, female song has not been conclusively documented in purple finch. When we hear a female-plumaged purple finch singing loudly in spring we have strong suspicions that it is a young male, though it’s hard to say for sure unless, as is sometimes the case, the bird is starting to show some of that purplish-raspberry color in places.

Another interesting thing that many people don’t know about the songs of purple finches is that amidst their rambling warbles they often throw in mimicked snippets of the songs or calls of other birds. And these imitations can be remarkably good! The assumption is that males that have more variations in their songs are more impressive to the females and more likely to attract mates.

Purple finches breed throughout Maine, preferring areas with evergreens, though it seems sometimes that even just a few scattered ornamental spruces are enough to keep them around a backyard where there is abundant year-round food at a bird feeder. purple finches like to place their nests in evergreen trees like spruces. Typically, they lay 4-5 eggs. The species seems to have done well this summer, with good numbers of young around the Midcoast region.

Although purple finches are winter residents here in Maine, many of these individuals could be coming from breeding areas to the north and west — banding return records show that many purple finches that nest in the southern Boreal forests of western Canada move eastwards for the winter, at least in some years.

So keep your ears open for those singing finches; and don’t let the plumage (or the season) fool you.

Dr. Jeff Wells is the senior scientist for the Boreal Songbird Initiative. During his time at the famed Cornell Lab of Ornithology and as the Audubon Society's national bird conservation director, Dr. Wells earned a reputation as one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. Jeff's grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, also formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a widely published natural history writer and a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Together, they have been writing and teaching people about birds for decades. The Maine natives are authors of the highly acclaimed book, “Maine's Favorite Birds.”