Yellow-faced Siskin

About the Yellow-faced Siskin

The yellow-faced siskin (Spinus yarrellii) is a species of finch in the family Fringillidae. It is found in Brazil and Venezuela. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist mountains, subtropical or tropical dry shrubland, arable land, plantations, and urban areas.

The yellow-faced siskin was formally described in 1839 by the Franco-American ornithologist John James Audubon under the binomial name Carduelis yarrellii. Audubon had illustrated the male and female birds in his The Birds of North America. He mistakenly specified the type locality as "Northern California" but this was re-designated in 1926 by the American ornithologist W. E. Clyde Todd as the Brazilian state of Bahia. Audubon chose the specific epithet to honour the English naturalist and bookseller William Yarrell. The yellow-faced siskin is now one of 20 finches placed in the genus Spinus that was introduced by Carl Ludwig Koch in 1816. A phylogenetic study published in 2015 found that the yellow-faced siskin was most closely related to the hooded siskin (Spinus magellanicus). No subspecies are recognised.

The yellow-faced siskin is sexually dimorphic with the male having a... Wikipedia →