Oriental Greenfinch

About the Oriental Greenfinch

The Oriental greenfinch (Chloris sinica), also known as the grey-capped greenfinch, is a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae that breeds in broadleaf and conifer woodlands of the East Palearctic. In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the Oriental greenfinch in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in China. He used the French name Le pinçon de la Chine and the Latin Fringilla sinencis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the oriental greenfinch. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Fringilla sinica and cited Brisson's work. The type locality was subsequently restricted to Macau in eastern China. The specific name sinica is Medieval Latin for Chinese.

The greenfinches were later placed in the genus Carduelis but when molecular phylogenetic studies found that they were... Wikipedia →