Purple Finch: how to know you have one, and how to keep it

The short answer

• Check four things in this order: face pattern, flank streaking, bill shape, and where the color sits. Color alone will fool you every time.
• A male Purple Finch is washed raspberry over the head, back, breast and rump with no clean edge to the color. A male House Finch wears red like a bib, with plain brown flanks streaked below it.
• The female is the easier bird: a Purple Finch has a bold white eyebrow and a dark cheek and jaw stripe, while a female House Finch has a blank, patternless face.
• Black oil sunflower and sunflower hearts are the top foods, taken from a tube, hopper or tray. Purple Finches will not use a ground-only setup for long.
• In most of the East and South this is a winter bird that arrives in some years and skips others, so an empty November means nothing about your feeder.

Almost every Purple Finch reported from a backyard feeder is a House Finch. That is not a criticism of anyone's eyesight. The two birds are close in size, they share the same seed, they sit on the same perch, and the field guide plate that shows them side by side in perfect light is nothing like the view you get through a kitchen window in flat February cloud.

So do not start with color. Start with the face.

The four-part check, in the order that works#

Work down this list and stop as soon as one feature is clear. The first two settle most birds.

Face pattern is the one to learn, because it works on females and young males, which is what most winter flocks are made of. A female or immature Purple Finch has a boldly striped head: a broad off-white eyebrow above a dark cheek, and a dark malar stripe running back from the base of the bill like a moustache. A female House Finch has none of that. Its head is a soft uniform brown with no lines on it at all. If you can see stripes on the face of a small streaky finch, you are looking at a Purple Finch.

Flank streaking decides the males. A male House Finch is a brown bird wearing a red bib: below the red, the sides are streaked with brown, and those streaks are the giveaway even when the light makes the red look wine-colored. A male Purple Finch has flanks that are either clean or washed pinkish, with no obvious brown lines.

Bill shape is worth checking when the bird is head-on and the plumage is ambiguous. Look at the top edge of the upper mandible. Straight means Purple, curved means House. Purple Finches are also the heavier bird, about 25 g against roughly 21 g, and it shows in the head and neck.

Color placement is the tiebreaker, not the opener. The old line about a sparrow dipped in raspberry juice is a description of coverage, not shade. The color on a male Purple Finch runs right over the back and rump so that the bird looks dyed. House Finch red stops at the chest.

What they do once they land#

Purple Finches feed like a bird that is used to sitting in a spruce and working a cone. They are deliberate. A bird lands, picks a seed, holds it in the bill and works the hull off with the tongue and mandibles for several seconds before swallowing, then reaches for the next one without moving. Ten minutes on one perch is normal.

They do not cache. Nothing is carried away and hidden, unlike the chickadees sharing your feeder, so a Purple Finch visit is a straightforward sit-and-eat and the seed you see going in is the seed being used.

Flock size is smaller than the finch flocks people expect: our data rates them 3 out of 4 for flocking against 4 for House Finches and Pine Siskins. Two to a dozen is the usual range, often arriving inside a mixed group of siskins and goldfinches rather than as their own party.

On dominance, they punch above their size. A Purple Finch will displace a House Finch or a goldfinch from a port with a short lunge and an open bill, and in mixed winter flocks they generally get the perch they want. Time of day is spread through the daylight hours with a clear first-light burst, and in freezing weather a longer late-afternoon feed before roosting.

Exactly what to put out, and where#

Skip for this species: Peanuts (in shell), Mealworms, Nectar.

Two practical readings of that table. First, black oil sunflower and sunflower hearts sit level at the top, so hearts buy you no extra attractiveness for a Purple Finch, only less mess. Choose between them on hulls, not on birds: see sunflower hearts versus in-shell. Second, they take striped sunflower and safflower readily, which most small finches will not, because the bill is strong enough for a thick hull. If squirrels or grackles are wrecking your station, a safflower feeder still holds Purple Finches.

Placement rules that matter for this species:

• Hang the feeder within 15 to 20 ft of a conifer or a dense tree if you have one. Purple Finches drop into cover first and then to the feeder, rather than crossing open lawn.
• Use a tube feeder or a hopper. Perch length does not matter here, unlike for cardinals: a 25 g finch is fine on a 2 in stub.
• Add water. Finches on a dry seed diet drink heavily, and a heated bird bath pulls in irruptive finches faster than any change of seed in a hard freeze.
• Do not build a ground-only station for them. They rate 2 out of 4 for ground use and will feed on spilled seed, but a tray or a tube is what holds them.

Why yours has not turned up#

Run these in order before changing anything about the feeder.

You are outside the winter range this year. This is the answer most of the time. Purple Finches are irruptive: they move south in numbers only when the northern conifer and birch seed crop fails, which happens on a roughly two-year rhythm in many regions but is far from reliable. A blank winter in Ohio or Virginia is normal, not a fault.

There is no conifer in the sightline. In marginal range they track spruce, hemlock, pine and mixed woodland edge. A feeder in the middle of a mown lawn in an open subdivision gets House Finches and little else. Planting matters more than hardware here: native plants and cover.

They came and you logged them as House Finches. Genuinely common. If your yard sits in the irruption zone, spend one careful morning on faces rather than color before concluding anything.

The feeder is monopolised. House Finches arrive in larger, more persistent groups and hold ports for long stretches. A second feeder 20 ft away, or a safflower feeder alongside the sunflower, spreads the pressure. See no birds at my feeder for the wider checklist.

You stopped feeding in April. In the northern half of the range the spring passage in late March and April is the most reliable Purple Finch window of the year, and it happens after most people have wound down. Keep one feeder stocked through spring.

Through the year#

In the boreal forest, northern New England, the Maritimes and along the Pacific slope, Purple Finches are present all year, thinning out of yards in June and July while they nest in conifers and eating buds, insects and tree seed instead of yours.

Southward movement builds from late September, peaks at feeders between November and February, and reverses through late March and April. Irruption years are decided by the seed crop far to the north, not by weather in your yard, which is why the species can be your commonest feeder bird one winter and entirely absent the next. If you want to see how that changes what you should be putting out month to month, the bird feeding calendar sets it against the rest of the year.

Frequently asked questions#

What is the difference between a Purple Finch and a House Finch?

Four things, and you should check them in this order. Face: a Purple Finch has a strong pattern, a pale eyebrow and a dark stripe below the cheek, while a House Finch face is plain. Flanks: House Finches have brown streaks running down the sides and belly, Purple Finch flanks are clean or washed pink. Bill: the House Finch bill is short with a curved top edge, the Purple Finch bill is longer and straight-edged. Color placement: House Finch red is a bib on the front, Purple Finch color spreads over the back and rump too.

Are female Purple Finches and female House Finches easier or harder to tell apart?

Easier, once you stop looking for color. A female Purple Finch has a boldly marked face: a broad white eyebrow, a dark ear patch and a dark stripe down from the base of the bill, all on a crisply streaked white breast. A female House Finch has no face pattern at all, just a soft brown head, and its underpart streaking is blurred and grayish rather than sharp and dark. If the face has stripes, it is a Purple Finch.

Why do I get House Finches but never Purple Finches?

Usually range and habitat rather than anything you are doing. Purple Finches are birds of conifer and mixed woodland, and away from the boreal forest, the Northeast, the northern Midwest and the Pacific slope they only appear in irruption winters when the northern seed crop fails. House Finches are comfortable in bare suburbs and towns and are present all year almost everywhere. If your yard has no conifers within sight and you are south of the finch's winter line, the odds are simply low.

What food attracts Purple Finches?

Black oil sunflower first, sunflower hearts equal to it, then striped sunflower, safflower and nyjer. They take sunflower in the shell readily because the bill is heavy enough to crack it, which is one practical difference from a goldfinch. Offer it in a tube with perches of any length, in a hopper, or on a tray. Skip suet, peanuts and mealworms, which they barely touch.

Is a Purple Finch actually purple?

No. The usual description is a sparrow dipped in raspberry juice, and that is accurate: the tone is wine or rose red, not violet. The useful part is where the color goes rather than what shade it is. On a male Purple Finch it runs over the crown, the nape, the back, the rump and the flanks, so the bird looks colored all over. A male House Finch has red on the forehead, throat and upper breast and stays plain brown behind it.

Sources and further reading

1. Purple Finch Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Plumage, measurements, range and habitat
2. House Finch Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Comparison species plumage and range
3. Feeding Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Seed preferences and feeder types for finches
4. Purple Finch National Audubon Society Guide to North American Birds Seasonal movements and irruptive behavior