Pyrrhuloxia
species of bird
The pyrrhuloxia or desert cardinal (Cardinalis sinuatus) is a medium-sized North American songbird found in the American southwest and northern Mexico. This distinctive species with a short, stout bill, red crest, and red wings closely resembles the northern cardinal and the vermilion cardinal, which are in the same genus.
Taxonomy
The desert cardinal is one of three birds in the genus Cardinalis in the family Cardinalidae, a group of passerine birds found in North and South America.
Its name of pyrrhuloxia was suggested as a new genus by ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte. He conceived it as portmanteau of the bullfinch genus Pyrrhula and the crossbill genus Loxia as he imagined the bird was an intermediate between the two . The common name, desert cardinal, refers to it inhabiting the southwest, and often arid regions, of the North American continent.
Description
The desert cardinal is a medium-sized song bird; the length for both sexes is about 8.3 in (21 cm), while the typical weight is 0.8–1.5 oz (24–43 g).
The most obvious differences between the male desert cardinal and the northern cardinal are in their coloring. The desert cardinal is predominantly brownish-gray with a red breast, a red mask, and a yellow, parrot-like bill that is stout and rounded. The females of the two species resemble each other much more closely, but the shapes of their bills are diagnostic.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pyrrhuloxia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.