House Finches are comfortable in urban areas such as city parks, city centres, backyards, farms, and forest edges, and these gregarious and social birds prefer to hang out in large noisy groups that are hard to miss when nearby. Is she blurry? She’s probably a house finch.Attracting House and Purple Finches to Your Backyard
The male house finch has brown stripes on his flanks. The orange variant is very rare in purple finches.” Purple (left) and house (right), photos by Marcy Cunkelmanįrom the front: The male purple finch has a rosy breast and sides with rosy stripes or dots of color on his flanks. NOTE! If you see a male that’s orange-red, it’s a house finch. The male house finch has red accents but is overall much browner with a brown back and neck. Here are some comparison photos of male finches - purple on the left, house on the right.įrom above: The male purple finch on the left has a rosy back, head and neck. In my experience house finches have small beady eyes compared to purple finches, though this may be a regional trait in southwestern Pennsylvania. They look a bit daintier than purple finches with a thinner neck and smaller beak with curved culmen. Their backs are brown and though their chests are red at the top their flanks are striped with brown. Male house finches are mostly brown with pale red or orange-red painted on their heads, breasts and rumps. Their heads, necks, backs and wing coverts are rosy-over-brown, their rumps are pure rose-color and their breasts are striped and dotted with rose. Instead of dark purple the males look as if they were dipped headfirst in rose-colored berry juice (a description attributed to Roger Tory Petersen). Purple and house finches look alike but they’re different.įor starters, purple finches are slightly misnamed. As of December 2011 Partners In Flight estimates there are about 3 million purple finches in North America. Unfortunately their population has declined a lot. and sometimes irrupt south in the winter, occasionally as far as Florida. Purple finches ( Haemorhous purpureus) breed in the coniferous forests of Canada and the northeastern U.S. but now we may see a similar northern visitor: the purple finch. Most of us see house finches ( Haemorhous mexicanus) on a regular basis because they’re resident throughout the U.S. In the winter we’re sometimes presented with an identification challenge at the bird feeder.