Promoted
Male House Finch
Males have a red head and breast and a streaked, brown belly. The red coloring comes from pigments contained in its food during molt. So, the more pigment in the food, the redder the male. Females seem to prefer to mate with the reddest male they can find, and this male finch is already paired up with a female.
House Finches were originally found in the western United States. But, in 1940 some finches were released on Long Island, New York after failed attempts to sell them as pet “Hollywood Finches”. After being released into nature, they spread across almost all of the eastern United States.
The House Finch is a bird in the finch family Fringillidae, which is found in North America. This species and the other "American rosefinches" are usually placed in the rosefinch genus "Carpodacus". It has been proposed to place them in a distinct genus "Burrica", but the American Ornithologists Union rejected a proposal to do so in 2008.
