Purple Finch vs. House Finch: How to Tell the Two Red Feeder Finches Apart

As feeders get busy again in fall, one identification puzzle comes up over and over: a small finch washed in red or raspberry lands on the seed, and it could be either of two very similar birds — the house finch (Haemorhous mexicanus), the abundant year-round finch of towns and suburbs across the country, or the purple finch (Haemorhous purpureus), a chunkier northern finch that pushes south into many areas in fall and winter. They overlap at feeders, they are close relatives, and the males of both are red, which is exactly why they get mixed up. The good news is that a few reliable marks separate them. Here is how to tell a purple finch from a house finch, on both the colorful males and the streaky brown females.

Start With the Males: Where Is the Red?

Both males are reddish, but the color is distributed very differently, and this is the fastest tell once you know it. The classic description is that a purple finch looks like a sparrow "dipped in raspberry juice," while a house finch looks like a brown finch with red splashed onto its front:

• House finch male: bright red-orange concentrated on the forehead, throat, and upper breast, but with the color stopping abruptly — the flanks and belly stay clearly brown with bold, crisp brown streaks running down the sides
• Purple finch male: a deeper raspberry or rosy-red that washes over the whole head, breast, and back and blends down the sides, so the bird looks suffused with color rather than red-in-front-and-brown-behind; the flanks look pinkish and lack the sharp dark streaks
• Overall tone: house finch red leans orange-red or even orangey; purple finch red leans pink-purple, like wine or crushed raspberries
• Build: purple finches are chunkier and bigger-headed with a shorter, more notched tail; house finches look slimmer and longer-tailed

The most dependable single mark on the males is the sides: obvious brown streaks down a brown flank means house finch, while clean pinkish sides with no strong streaking means purple finch.

The Females Are the Real Test

Females and young birds of both species are brown and streaky with no red at all, and this is where people give up too early — but the females are actually easier to separate than the males once you look at the face. The purple finch female has a boldly patterned head; the house finch female has a plain one:

• Purple finch female: a strongly marked face with a broad whitish eyebrow stripe and a dark brown cheek patch and jaw stripe, giving a clean, contrasty pattern; underneath, crisp dark-brown streaks on a white background
• House finch female: a plain, washed-out brown face with no strong eyebrow or cheek pattern — just a blank brownish head — and blurrier, softer gray-brown streaking below
• Bill shape: purple finches have a slightly larger, straighter-edged bill; house finches have a stubbier bill with a more curved upper edge (culmen)

If a streaky brown finch has a striking white eyebrow and a dark ear patch that make its face look patterned, it is a purple finch. If the face is plain and featureless, it is a house finch.

Habitat, Season, and a Third Look-Alike

Behavior and timing help too. House finches are the default reddish finch in cities, suburbs, and around buildings, present all year and often in noisy groups at feeders and nesting in hanging baskets and eaves. Purple finches are more birds of woodlands and conifers that many people only see in fall and winter, when numbers move south and turn up at feeders — some years in good numbers, other years hardly at all. In the West, a third relative, Cassin's finch, adds to the confusion; it is paler and even more sharply peaked in the head, with a distinct crisp eyebrow-less face and a straight bill, and favors higher-elevation conifer country. For most of the eastern and central states, though, the everyday puzzle is just these two, and the flank-streaking and face-pattern tests will settle it.

Quick field call: red only on the front with bold brown streaks down the sides (or a plain-faced brown female) is a house finch; raspberry washed all over with clean pinkish sides (or a boldly white-eyebrowed brown female) is a purple finch.

Caught a reddish or streaky finch at the feeder and cannot decide between house and purple? Snap a photo — ideally showing the sides and the face — and let Spotter help you confirm which finch you are hosting this fall, and sort it from the other feeder birds arriving with the cold.