Finches, euphonias and allies | Fringillidae

Vinkachtigen | Fringílidos

Seed is not only cracked on the spot but also carried away: a pouch in the oesophagus holds a store that sees the bird through the night and from which the young are fed as well. Unlike almost all other songbirds, those young are given regurgitated seed rather than insects, which frees breeding from the peak of insect abundance: they breed where and when the seed ripens, and after a poor seed crop whole populations leave their usual range and turn up far to the south. The flight is deeply undulating, and on each wave comes a call by which the species can be told apart without being seen. In the crossbills the tips of the bill slide past one another: with them the scales of a cone are levered apart and the seed lifted out with the tongue, even in midwinter. The Hawaiian honeycreepers are counted in this family too; their bills range from short and heavy to long and sickle-shaped, some live on nectar, and many of these birds now hold on only in high mountain forest, above the zone where mosquitoes carry avian malaria.