Haemorhous purpureus
Order Passeriformes
Family Fringillidae
Subfamily Carduelinae
♂ Adult male.— Entire body suffused with rose-red, strongest on the head, rump, and throat; back streaked with brownish; belly grayish; wings and tail brownish; tail rather deeply forked.
♀ Adult female and Immature.— Upper parts grayish-brown, streaked; under parts grayish, streaked with brown; line behind eye gray.
♂ Male in first breeding season, like the female.
Nest, in evergreens, five to thirty feet up.
Eggs, blue, spotted at large end with brownish.
The Purple Finch is a permanent resident of New England and New York, but of irregular occurrence in winter, sometimes very rare, often rather common. In southern New England and the lower Hudson Valley, it is a common migrant in April, and in September and October, but few remain through the summer. New England the summer residents arrive in April and stay until October. They are found, in winter, either in cedar groves or in hard wood, near groves of hop hornbeam, but they are active, restless birds, and may be heard anywhere flying overhead. In spring they frequent the same places, but come also to the evergreens about houses, and to the elms in the street, the swelling buds of which they bite off. In summer they build chiefly in conifers, and are numerous in the great northern forests. They utter, when flying, a single sharp pit, by which they may be easily identified.
Their song is vigorous and musical, a rapid, energetic warble, often lengthened in the height of the mating season to a long, passionate utterance (see Warbling Vireo). The male at this season walks, or rather dances, about the female, with wings spread and quivering, repeating the song in a low, pleading tone, or he flies off singing in the air in his loudest tones. A call-note, resembling the syllables pě-wee’, is given by both sexes, and it is known that the female occasionally sings, though often when the song seems to be uttered by a female, the singer is really a male of the preceding summer. The large bill of the female should distinguish her from any brown, streaked sparrow.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)