264 U.S. NATIONAL IVITJSEUM BULLETIN 237 paRT i 



CARPODACUS PURPUREUS PURPUREUS (Gmelin) 



Eastern Purple Finch 



PLATE 15 



Habits 



The above name may be misleading to the novice, for it is no more 

 purple, as we understand the term today, than it is blue or yellow. 

 Crimson finch would be a more appropriate name. (However, the 

 "purple" of the Bible and of classical writers was not very different 

 from the red of the male purple finch.) The species has also been 

 called "linnet" and even "purple grosbeak." 



Before the introduction and the subsequent increase of the house 

 sparrow, during the last quarter of the previous century, the pm-ple 

 finch was a common summer resident in southern New England, 

 where we now know it almost entirely as a winter visitor. J. A. 

 Allen (1869) wrote at that time: "Nearly aU observers in Southern 

 New England that I have met remark that this bird has greatly 

 increased there during the last ten years; especially is it more numerous 

 in the breeding season." It was certainly common enough when I 

 was a boy in the 1870's. We could find plenty of nests in the spruces 

 near our homes, and we caught the birds under sieves, or in cage 

 traps; they made attractive pets as cage birds, for they sang well in 

 captivity. 



But, as the sparrows increased, the fmches became steadily rarer 

 until now, when only an occasional pair can be found nesting in 

 southeastern Massachusetts. William Brewster (1906) tells a similar 

 story for the Cambridge region: "Up to within twenty-five or thirty 

 years the brilliant, ecstatic song of the Pm-ple Finch might be heard 

 through May, June and early July in almost every part of Cambridge — 

 including even Cambridgeport. Many were the nests of this bird 

 that I used to find in our Norway spruces and other ornamental 

 evergreens, but since the English Sparrows became numerous the 

 Purple Finches have abandoned one favorite urban haunt after 

 another, and, excepting at their seasons of migi'ation, I seldom see or 

 hear them now in the older settled parts of Cambridge." 



This is certainly true of the increasingly densely built up urban 

 areas, but, reports C. H. Blake, some sizable populations still breed 

 in the outer ring of suburbs. In Lexington, Mass., backyard trapping 

 by Mr. and Mrs. Parker C. Reed has shown a fair number of breeding 

 bhds present. In some (approximately alternate) years many birds 

 in Juvenal plumage come to the traps in late summer and fall. They 

 banded 343 such in 1954. Of course these represent the production 

 of a considerable area; nevertheless singing summer males are not 

 really uncommon 15 to 18 miles from Boston. At the present time 



