House bullfinches

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House bullfinches
Male of the common bullfinch (Carpodacus mexicanus), subspecies frontalis

Male of the common bullfinch ( Carpodacus mexicanus ), subspecies frontalis

Systematics
Subordination : Songbirds (passeri)
Family : Finches (Fringillidae)
Subfamily : Goldfinches (Carduelinae)
Tribe : Carduelini
Genre : American carminlet ( Haemorhous )
Type : House bullfinches
Scientific name
Haemorhous mexicanus
( Statius Müller , 1776)
Female of the common bull
In some males, the otherwise red areas are yellow or orange due to their diet
Sound recording

The house bullfinch ( Haemorhous mexicanus ) is a songbird in the finch family . Originally the species was only distributed in the western half of North America from Canada to Mexico, but was also settled on the east coast in the 1940s and has since spread over large parts of the USA and Canada. It mainly breeds near settlements and is one of the very common species. In some places in the USA it is simply referred to as "the linnet" (= "the linnet").

description

Appearance

With a length of 12.5–15 cm, the house bullfinch is the smallest of the three species of the genus Haemorhous that were formerly part of the carmine rasp . The wing length is 74–83.5 mm in the male and 70–80 mm in the female. The tail length is between 57 and 65 mm. The relatively short, strong beak is dark above and lighter horn-colored below, the feet brown or flesh-colored.

The sexes differ significantly in the color of the plumage. In the male, the front upper head including the eye stripes , throat and front chest are colored intensely red. The red color runs out on the chest to the light belly. On the ear covers and nape of the neck and on the back part of the head it washes out into grayish brown. Flanks and belly are more or less strongly dashed on a whitish to brown-beige background, depending on the subspecies. The back is gray-brown with dark feathers and slightly reddish in the unused plumage. The rump shows a more or less faded, but strong red. The upper tail-coverts and the joint are gray-brown. The tail looks relatively long, is not forked, but ends wide and straight. The arm covers are dark brown with - depending on the subspecies - beige or reddish hems and tips that form a double band. The wings and coverts are dark brown with lighter edges. It is not uncommon for males to appear in which the red on the head, front breast and rump is replaced by yellow or orange due to their diet.

The female lacks the red parts of the male. The underside is usually a bit more faded. Due to the lack of an over-the-eye stripe, the bird looks very inconspicuous, only the double light band of wings stands out optically. The youth dress is similar to that of the female but is more finely striped and overall paler.

voice

The call, often given in flight and in a row , is a chieet , quieet or fidlp , sometimes a sparrow-like chirp or a long wiiiiiiirrr can be heard. The singing is an incoherent, melodic chirping at a steady pace. It starts with clear, high notes and ends with a deeper, more muted passage. The final syllable is sometimes an accented wiee-err . Overall, the song is higher than that of the other two North American carpenter species.

Distribution and geographic variation

The house bullfinch was originally only common in the western half of North America. There he inhabits an area that extends from southern British Columbia to southern Mexico . The species was introduced to Long Island in the 1940s and spread throughout the United States and parts of Canada by 2008. While only parts of the east coast were settled in the 1980s, in the 1990s the distribution reached northward to Canada , westward to Illinois and southward to South Carolina and Alabama . The trend towards spreading continues and has also been observed in southern Mexico since the 1980s. It is possible that this occurrence was also justified by prisoner refugees. The species was introduced to Hawaii around 1870 and has spread to numerous Pacific islands.

The males of the subspecies differ in the extent and intensity of the red areas as well as in the color of the upper side. By far the most widespread subspecies is frontalis , many others are endemic to some of the offshore islands off California.

Spread of the house bullfinch from 1958 to 1990

hikes

The house bullfinch is mostly a resident bird , sometimes dismigrations take place in winter . Some birds migrate quite far to the Gulf of Mexico . In the eastern United States, some populations are partial migrants , with the females migrating further south than the males.

Way of life

The bullfinch populates mainly suburbs and villages, but can also be found in the cultural landscape, in orchards, open forest landscapes, bushland and semi-arid habitats. The height distribution extends to about 1500 m above sea level. The species is widespread and very common in many places.

The diet consists of seeds, such as thistles and dandelions, but also of buds, flowers and fruits. It is primarily collected on the ground.

To ward off parasites, bullfinches and sparrows often build cigarette butts into their nests. According to a study by the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico , the biologists working with Monserrat Suarez-Rodriguez found cigarette filters integrated in around 90 percent of all nests. It has been proven that the extent of mite infestation correlated strongly with the number of reused butts. The nicotine it contains is a powerful insecticide.

Systematics

The house bullfinch, like the closely related species, purple and cassing pimples, was long placed in the genus Carpodacus , within which they were the only three species with a purely nearctic distribution. Investigations of the mitochondrial DNA from 2007 and 2011 showed that the genus is polyphyletic and that the three nearctic finch species are not as closely related to the other "carmine rasp" as assumed. The American Ornithologists' Union followed the proposal to classify the three species in their own genus in 2012 in its 53rd Supplement to the Check List of North American Birds, and the International Ornithological Committee also recognized the change. They are now in the Haemorhous genus established by William Swainson in 1837 .

literature

  • P. Clement, A. Harris, J. Davis: Finches and Sparrows , Helm Identification Guides, London 1993/1999, ISBN 0-7136-5203-9
  • DA Sibley: The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, AA Knopf, New York 2003, ISBN 0-679-45120-X

Web links

Commons : House Bullfinch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Clemet et al. (1993), p. 274, section “Status, Habitat and Behavior”, see literature
  2. M. Suarez-Rodriguez, I. Lopez-Rull, C. Macias Garcia: Incorporation of cigarette butts into nests reduces nest ectoparasite load in urban birds: new ingredients for an old recipe ?. In: Biology Letters. 9, 2012, p. 20120931, doi : 10.1098 / rsbl.2012.0931 .
  3. ^ Nester aus Kippen , Wissenschaft.de, December 5, 2012, accessed May 9, 2015
  4. ^ A. Arnaiz-Villena et al .: Bayesian phylogeny of Fringillinae birds: Status of the singular African Oriole Finch Linurgus olivaceus and evolution and heterogeneity of the genus Carpodacus . Acta Zoologica Sinica 53, pp. 826-834, 2007
  5. Heather RL Lerner, Matthias Meyer, Helen F. James, Michael Hofreiter, Robert C. Fleischer: Multilocus Resolution of Phylogeny and Timescale in the Extant Adaptive Radiation of Hawaiian Honeycreepers , Current Biology 21, pp. 1–7, 2011, doi : 10.1016 / j.cub.2011.09.039
  6. Dario Zuccon, Robert Prys-Jones, Pamela C. Rasmussen, Per GP Ericson: The phylogenetic relationships and generic limits of finches (Fringillidae) , Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 2012, pp. 581-596, doi : 10.1016 / j.ympev .2011.10.002
  7. ^ IOC World Bird List v 5.4 by Frank Gill & David Donsker (eds.) , Accessed on December 14, 2015
  8. ^ R. Terry Chesser, Richard C. Banks, F. Keith Barker, Carla Cicero, Jon I. Dunn, Andrew W. Kratter, Irby J. Lovette, Pamela C. Rasmussen, J. v. Remsen, JR., James D. Rising, Douglas F. Stotz, Kevin Winker: Fifty-third Supplement to the American Ornithologists' Union Check-List of North American Birds , The Auk 129/3, pp. 573-588, 2012, ( PDF )