Introduction
Research indicates that the favorite foods of House Finches are black-oil and hulled sunflower, thistle, canary, and melon seed. My hypothesis was that a specialized finch mix would attract more finches than a generic mix.

Methods
Site: small urban yard with shrubbery.
Set-up: two bird feeders six feet from the ground, hanging from trees.
Finch mix: sunflower heart chips, golden finch millet, canary seed, thistle.
Generic mix: white millet, cracked corn, black-oil sunflower, safflower, wheat, peanut hearts.
Protocol: Each feeder held one of the seed mixes. I observed birds from a window several yards from the feeders, using binoculars. I recorded observations on count sheets for two 20-minute periods starting at 7:00 A.M. and 3:30 P.M. for 15 days.

Results

Figure 1. Total number of House Finch visit to feeders with different seed mixes.

House Finches visited the feeder with the generic mix 18 times and the feeder with the specialized mix 68 times. The highest number of finches I observed at one time was three at the feeder with generic mix and six at the feeder with specialized mix. Figure 1 shows the total number of visits to each feeder.

Conclusion
The specialized mix was more effective at attracting House Finches. On all 15 days, more finches visited the feeder with the specialized mix than the generic mix.