Plus, it sounds like it has to do with fashion. He’s a house finch.” Purple Finch is a less threatening name. Parents might tell their children, “Don’t go in that yard, kids. It reminds me of a nickname given to a recluse or a hoarder. The name House Finch has a creepy quality. But I think the real reason folks claim to have Purple Finches is because they like saying the name.

In addition, many older bird books only included Purple Finches because House Finches didn’t breed in the eastern half of North America until the early 1940s. The reason for this misidentification is because House Finches are extremely common in our area and they look very similar to the less common Purple Finch. To be fair, 99.999% of the Purple Finch reports we receive each year turn out to be a House Finch. They still might not believe you, but they’ll be happy to talk about it. The next time you come in to our shop tell whoever is working that you saw a stylish purple dog riding a horse around your feeder. Instead of birds, they seem to be more interested in discussing dogs, horses, dogs, fashion and dogs. You would think that people who have spent the past eighty-six years working in a birding store would be better at identifying birds, but sometimes their focus is on other things. They sure look like Purple Finches to me. So I went home and took the attached photos.

She looked at me with a suspicious eye and suggested that the birds I was seeing were House Finches. I was in your store the other day and told the woman behind the counter that I had a pair of Purple Finches coming to my feeder.

Purple finch vs house finch