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The house finch is a moderate-sized finch, 12.5 to 15 cm (5 to 6 in) long, with a wingspan of 20 to 25 cm (8 to 10 in). Body mass can vary from 16 to 27 g (9 ⁄ 16 to 15 ⁄ 16 oz), with an average weight of 21 g (3 ⁄ 4 oz).
Confusingly, only 79 of the species include "finch" in their common names, and several other families include species called finches. This list includes 18 extinct species, the Bonin grosbeak and 17 Hawaiian honeycreepers.
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.
In 1758, the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus included the common linnet in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name, Acanthis cannabina. [2] [3] The species was formerly placed in the genus Carduelis but based on the results of a phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences published in 2012, it was moved to the genus Linaria that had been introduced ...
The only finch in its subfamily to undergo a complete molt, the American goldfinch displays sexual dichromatism: the male is a vibrant yellow in the summer and an olive color during the winter, while the female is a dull yellow-brown shade which brightens only slightly during the summer.
Within the genus the House Finch is the outgroup, meaning the Purple and Cassin's finches are more closely related to one another than either is to the House Finch. [5]
Based both on their own results and those published earlier by other groups, they proposed a series of changes to the taxonomy. [7] They found that the three North American rosefinches, namely Cassin's finch , purple finch , and house finch , formed a separate clade that was not closely related to the Palearctic rosefinches.
The purple finch population has been displaced from some breeding season habitats in the Eastern United States following the introduction of the house finch, which is native to the western U.S. and Mexico. The two species share a similar niche, with the house finch often outcompeting the purple finch during the summer. [11]