Finch
Videos
The true finches are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Fringillidae. Finches generally have stout conical bills adapted for eating seeds and nuts and often have colourful plumage. They occupy a great range of habitats where they are usually resident and do not migrate. They have a worldwide native distribution except for Australia and the polar regions. The family Fringillidae contains more than two hundred species divided into fifty genera. It includes the canaries, siskins, redpolls, serins, grosbeaks and euphonias, as well as the morphologically divergent Hawaiian honeycreepers.
Image: Pyrrhula pyrrhula female 2
Image: Bullfinch male
Euphonias, like this thick-billed euphonia, were once treated as tanagers instead of finches.
American goldfinch (Spinus tristis) male (left) and female (right) in Johnston County, North Carolina, USA
Grosbeak
Videos
Grosbeak is a form taxon containing various species of seed-eating passerine birds with large beaks. Although they all belong to the superfamily Passeroidea, these birds are not part of a natural group but rather a polyphyletic assemblage of distantly related songbirds. Some are cardueline finches in the family Fringillidae, while others are cardinals in the family Cardinalidae; one is a member of the weaver family Ploceidae. The word "grosbeak", first applied in the late 1670s, is a partial translation of the French grosbec, where gros means "large" and bec means "beak".
This female evening grosbeak (Hesperiphona vespertina) is considered to be a "typical" grosbeak.
Pine grosbeak, Pinicola enucleator
Kona grosbeak (Chloridops kona)
Black-headed grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus)