Winter Bright

House Finch, Carpodacus mexicanus, in Prospect Park. This is the colorful male; the female is drably stripy.

The species is native to southwestern North America. The birds were sold on the East Coast by the pet trade as “Hollywood Finches” until dealing in wild songbirds was made illegal in 1940. Pet store owners, an appalling lot throughout history, dumped their birds to avoid prosecution. A small colony of these finches managed to survive on Long Island before spreading like Levittown up and down the East Coast. The rise in bird-feeding, another symptom of suburbia, is thought to have contributed to this expansion: small flocks of these finches are often found at feeders.

(Confidential to TP: my edition of Peterson, the 5th, definitely describes the Purple Finch, C. purpureus, as “like a sparrow dipped in raspberry juice,” not toxic Kool-Aid.)