Xhe Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureus) 



By Mabel Osgood Wright 



Length: 6% inches. 



Range: Eastern North America, from Atlantic coast to the plains. 



These beautiful songsters are common in the northern tier of states and in 

 Canada. 



Its song is a loud, long-continued and very sweet warble, which resembles 

 that of the canary. 



The family of sparrows and finches, like that of the warblers, blackbirds 

 and orioles, offers such an infinite variety of species and disports so many con- 

 tradictory fashions in the cut of beaks and tinting of plumage that when we 

 have even a bowing acquaintance with it we feel that we have really entered the 

 realm of bird knowledge. 



In addition to its rarity the family of finches and sparrows is the largest of 

 all bird families, numbering some five hundred and fifty species, that inhabit all 

 parts of the world except .-\ustralia. 



The one point that binds them together wliich the untrained may discover 

 is the stout bill, conical in shape, with great power for seed-crushing. For, first 

 and last, all of the tribe are seed-eaters, and though in the nesting season much 

 animal food is eaten by adults as well as fed to the young, and tree-buds and 

 fruits are also relished, the tribe of finches and sparrows can live well upon 

 seed.s — the seeds of weeds, the seeds concealed between the scales of pine-cones 

 and the pulp-enveloped seeds of wild fruits that are called berries. 



This ability to pick a living at any season of the year that the seeded weeds 

 of waste fields and roadsides are uncovered makes what are called "permanent 

 residents" of many species of sparrows, and causes them, when they migrate, 

 to still keep to a more restricted circle than their insect-eating brethren. Also, 

 alas ! this seed-eating quality, cou]>lc(l with beauty of plumage and voice, has 

 made them favorite cage-birds the world over. Happily, freedom has now come 

 to them in this country, together with all our birds, and as far as the law may 

 protect them thev are safe, though the latest reports say that small consignments 

 of mockingbirds and cardinals are still smuggled over seas by way of Hamburg. 



Run over the list of prominent members of the family of finches and spar- 

 rows. Call them by memon' if you can: if not, take a book and look them up. 



The sparrows are clad in shades of brown more or less streaked, and their 

 dull colors protect them amid the grasses in which they feed and lodge. The 

 birds of brighter plumage are obliged to look out for themselves, as it were, and 

 keep nearer the sky, where their colors are lost in the blaze of light. 



First to be remembered are the birds that wear more or less red — the cardi- 

 nal, the ro.se-breasted grosbeak, the redpolls, crossbills, the pine grosbeak and 

 the purple finch (who is no more purple than he is blue or yellow). 



Then come three birds who would seem original and striking in any family 



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