Brown-capped Rosy-Finch

Leucosticte australis

Order PASSERIFORMES - Family FRINGILLIDAE - Subfamily Carduelinae

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1. Cool Facts
2. Description
3. Similar Species
4. Sound
5. Range
6. Habitat
7. Food
8. Behavior
9. Reproduction
10. Conservation Status
11. Other Names

Like the other rosy-finches, the Brown-capped Rosy-Finch is a bird of the high mountains, breeding above timberline. It has the smallest range of the three American species, being found primarily in Colorado.

Cool Facts

• It usually takes a female Brown-capped Rosy-Finch one to three days to construct a nest (the male does not help). At one site, however, construction took 18 days because wind completely removed the nest twice. Another female took 11 to 14 days to build her nest because the nest material kept sliding off the sloping nest ledge.
• The Brown-capped Rosy-Finch lines its nest with grass, feathers, and fur. It also has been recorded using, cotton, pieces of cloth, ravelings of burlap, and, in one nest, a piece of blasting fuse.

• Rosy-finches build their nests in crevices where they stay completely in the shade. One Brown-capped Rosy-Finch nest was frozen in ice each night when the water trickling through the site froze.

Description

• Size: 14-16 cm (6-6 in)
• Wingspan: 33 cm (13 in)
• Weight: 23-33 g (0.81-1.16 ounces)

• Medium-sized finch.
• Cinnamon-brown on back, breast, neck, and face.
• Black forehead.
• Red or pink on belly, rump, and in wings.

• Long, pointed wings.
• White tuft of feathers at base of bill.
• Back streaked with black.
• Underwings appear silvery in flight.
• Tail notched.
• Bill gray to black during breeding, yellow in fall and winter.
• Eyes brown.
• Legs and feet black.

Sex Differences

Sexes similar, but female lighter brown, with pink instead of red.

Immature

Juvenile drab gray-brown all over, with pinkish in wings.

Similar Species

• Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch is darker brown and has gray patch wrapping from eyes to back of head.
• Black Rosy-Finch has black body and gray patch wrapping from eyes to back of head.

Sound

Call a buzzy "Chew."

»listen to songs of this species

Range

Summer Range

Breeds in high mountains from southern Wyoming, through Colorado, to northern New Mexico.

Winter Range

Winters to lower elevations in breeding range.

Habitat

Above timberline wherever proper cliffs, caves, rock slides, or old buildings provide nest sites, and where adequate feeding grounds on tundra, rock slides, snowfields, and glaciers are within commuting distance. Winters in open areas, including alpine tundra during fair weather, and in high parks, meadows, and open valleys of grass or open shrubland between mountain ranges.

Food

Seeds, insects, and spiders.

Behavior

Foraging

Picks insects and seeds from surface of snow, mud, and tundra.

Reproduction

Nest Type

Tightly woven cup of fine grass, stems, and rootlets surrounded by thicker layer of woven coarse stems and roots and mud, lined with grass, feathers, and hair. Placed under large rocks in rockslides and moraines; on rafters in old buildings; on walls of caves, abandoned mines, and railroad tunnels; and most frequently in holes, fissures, and ledges of cliffs.

Egg Description

White.

Clutch Size

3-6 eggs.

Condition at Hatching

Helpless with sparse down.

Conservation Status

May be declining slightly.

Other Names

Roselin à tête brune (French)
Rosy Finch (in part) (English)

Sources used to construct this page:

Johnson, R. E., P. Hendricks, D. L. Pattie, and K. B. Hunter. 2000. Brown-capped Rosy-Finch (Leucosticte australis). In The Birds of North America, No. 536 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.