Orphaned House Finch Paired With Older Finch

The following story about house finches was shared with us by Rockfish Wildlife Sanctuary in Virginia.

These two house finches were some late admits to Rockfish Wildlife Sanctuary in August of 2025. Our center generally admits the majority of baby birds between the months of April and July, with most of our house finches admitted being older juveniles by July.

We had one very late-bloomer house finch come in around August after a cat destroyed its nest and ate its siblings. During this time, since it was late in the season, the only other appropriate cagemate that could be provided for it was a much older house finch.

We feed all of our young house finches a mix of EmerAid IC Carnivore and another bird food to ensure they grow at the proper rate with the proper nutrition. This young finch was hand-fed with this diet every 30 minutes.

Though the older finch keeping it company was already weaned off of this diet, it couldn’t help but try and steal some bites of this food from the younger finch as well.

After about four weeks in intensive care on this diet, both finches were eventually ready to wean off of it and start eating exclusively bird seed.

These finches were released back to the wild together as a pair at the end of August.