Loss Of Wild Finch Population

The winter of 1989 I moved to Columbia County, NY, to a hill outside Kinderhook. When spring came, many many finches arrived. These birds are tiny, a bit longer than your thumb, and shapely, plump. They have a distinctive swooping, zooming flying pattern, and there are many varieties with distinctive markings on the head and body, and various beak and feather colors, golden to purplish deep brown. The birds were everywhere, and left in the fall, returning each spring and staying all summer. Gradually there were fewer and fewer each year, until seeing a finch became a rare event. I read that their winter habitat had drastically diminished due to forest cutting in the Panama area.