Re: Purple Finch female singing?
29 May 2001 14:38:10 -0700
From: Les Chibana
Kay and all respondents,
This question has come up on the South Bay and Monterey Bay bird lists, most recently on the latter. The gist of the situation is that everyone's responses are correct to a certain extent. Second-year male Purple Finches can look like females and females do sing. Being certain about which sex it is may not be so clear. Rusty's note about the song being more abbreviated than the males is also what I've heard. Apparently, this behavior is shared by the House Finch also.
Here are some references courtesy of Jeff Davis over in Santa Cruz:
For published details on female song in House Finch see:
Bitterbaum, E. and L. F. Baptista. 1979. Geographical variation in songs of California House Finches (Carpodacus mexicanus). Auk 96:462-474.
Mundinger, P. C. 1982. Microgeographic and macrogeographic variations in the acquired vocalizations of birds, pp. 147-208. in Acoustic communication in birds, Vol. 2 (D. E. Kroodsma and E. H. Miller, eds.) Academic Press, New York.
Thompson, W. L. 1960a. Agonistic behavior in the House Finch. Part I: Annual cycle and display patterns. Condor 62:245-271.
For female song in Purple Finch see:
Wootton, J. T. 1996. Purple Finch. In The Birds of North America, No. 208 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and The American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, D.C.
Les Chibana
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Re: Purple finches - thank you
Tue, 29 May 2001 15:28:33 -0700
From: Kay Loughman
Thanks to all of you who responded to my query about the Purple Finch. From what you've said, it appears that my bird could be either an adult female or a 2nd year male. If the latter, presumably the plumage will be changing over the next couple of months. Hope the bird sticks around....
Kay Loughman
Berkeley
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