Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The family Fringillidae are the "true" finches. The International Ornithological Committee (IOC) recognizes these 239 species in the family, distributed among three subfamilies and 50 genera. Confusingly, only 79 of the species include "finch" in their common names, and several other families include species called finches.
Birds do not act aggressively toward predators within their territory; their only reaction is alarm calling. Predators include snakes, weasels, squirrels, and blue jays, which may destroy eggs or kill young, and hawks and cats, which pose a threat to both young and adults. The oldest known American goldfinch was 10 years and 5 months old. [26]
The European goldfinch was one of the birds described and illustrated by Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner in his Historiae animalium of 1555. [2] The first formal description was by Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae published in 1758. He introduced the binomial name, Fringilla carduelis.
Finches are a form taxon composed of unrelated but similar-looking songbirds within the family Fringillidae of the superfamily Passeroidea. The family Fringillidae includes numerous birds not called "finches" in their common names, including the crossbills , siskins , and waxbills .
The American rosefinches that form the genus Haemorhous are a group of passerine birds in the finch family Fringillidae. As the name implies ("haemo" means "blood" in Greek), various shades of red are characteristic plumage colors of this group. They are found throughout the North American continent.
In this list of birds by common name 11,278 extant and recently extinct (since 1500) bird species are recognised. [1] Species marked with a "†" are extinct.
The name Fringillidae for the finch family was introduced in 1819 by the English zoologist William Elford Leach in a guide to the contents of the British Museum. [3] [4] The taxonomy of the family, in particular the cardueline finches, has a long and complicated history.
The female and young birds are duller and have brown tones on the back. The bill is thick and conical. [11] The song contains a lot of trilling twitters interspersed with wheezes, and the male has a "butterfly" display flight. Male greenfinch birds exhibit higher degrees of fluctuating asymmetry.