FBINGILLID^ : FINCHUS, BUNTINGS, SPABROWS, ETC. 



339 



Fig. 205. — European Ghafflncli (Fringilla coelebs]. (After Dixon.) 



16. Family FRINGILLID-^ : Finches, etc. 



Conirostral Oscmes with 

 9 primaries. — The largest 

 NortJi American family, 

 comprising about one- 

 seventh (123 : 888) of all 

 our birds, and the most 

 extensive group of its 

 grade in ornithology. As 

 ordinarily constituted, it 

 represents, in round num- 

 bers 500 current species 

 and 100 genera, of nearly 

 all parts of the world, ex- 

 cept Australia, but more 

 pai-ticularly of the northern 

 hemisphere and through- 

 out America, where the 

 group attains its maximum 

 development. Any one 

 United States locality of 

 average attractiveness to 

 birds has a bird-fauna of over 200 species ; and if it be away from the sea-coast, and conse- 

 quently uninhabited by marine birds, about one-fourth of its species are SylvicoUdce and 

 FrmgillideB together — the latter somewhat in excess of the former. It is not easy, therefore, 

 to give updue prominence to these two families. 



The FrmgilUdcB are more particularly what used to be called " conirostral" birds, in dis- 

 tinction from " fissirostres,'' as the swallows, swifts, and goatsuckers, " tenuirostres,'' as hum- 

 ming-birds and creepers, and " dentirostres," as warblers, vireos, and most of the preceding 

 families. The bill approaches nearest the ideal cone, combining strength to crush seeds, with 

 delicacy of touch to secure minute objects. The cone is sometimes nearly expressed, but is 

 more frequently turgid or conoidal, convex in most directions or, again, so contracted that some 

 of its outlines are concave. The nostrils are always situated high up — nearer the culmen than 

 the cutting edge of the bill ; they are usually exposed, but in many, chiefly boreal, genera, the 

 base of the bill is furnished with a ruff or two tufts of antrorse feathers more or less completely 

 covering the openings. The cutting edges of the biU may be slightly notched, but are usually 

 plain. There are usually a few inconspicuous bristles about the rictus, sometimes wanting, 

 sometimes highly developed, as in our grosbeaks. The wings are endlessly varied in shape, 

 but agree in possessing only nine developed primaries ; the tail is equally variable in form, but 

 always has twelve rectrices. The feet show a strictly Oscine or laminiplantar podotheca, 

 scutellate in front, covered on each side with an undivided plate, producing a sharp ridge 

 behind. None of these members offer extreme phases of development in any of our species. 



But the most tangible characteristic of the family is angulation of the eommisswre. The 

 commissure runs in a straight line, or with a slight curve, to or near to the base of the bill, and 

 is then more or less abruptly bent down at a varying angle — the cutting edge of the upper 

 mandible forming a reentrance, that of the lower mandible a con-esponding salience. In 

 familiar terms, we might say that the comers of the mouth are drawn down — that the Finches, 

 though very merry little birds, are literally " down in the mouth." In the great majority of 

 cases this feature is unmistakable, and in the grosbeaks, for example, it is very strongly marked 



