The Purple Finch is not really purple — the male is washed a rich raspberry-red across the head, breast, and back, as if dipped in wine. The female is a crisply streaked brown bird with a bold white eyebrow and a strong facial pattern that gives her a very different look from the plainer House Finch female. Roger Tory Peterson famously described the male as "a sparrow dipped in raspberry juice," which remains the best shorthand for the bird.
Purple Finches breed in the coniferous and mixed forests of northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, then spread south and to feeders across the state in fall and winter, though their numbers vary from year to year with the northern seed crop. Where they overlap with the very similar House Finch, careful attention to the head pattern, bill shape, and the male's color tone is needed to tell the two apart.
Feeds heavily on seeds and buds of trees, along with berries and weed seeds, using its stout conical bill. It adds insects in the breeding season. At feeders it strongly favors black-oil sunflower seed and will readily join other finches at tube and platform feeders.
The male Purple Finch is raspberry-red all over the head and back with a cleaner look, while the House Finch male is more orange-red confined to the head and breast with brown-streaked flanks. Female Purple Finches have a bold white eyebrow and crisp face pattern; female House Finches are plainer and blurrier.
No. The name is misleading — the male is a deep rose or raspberry-red, not purple. There is no truly purple plumage on the bird.
Mostly in fall and winter across the southern part of the state, when birds move down from northern breeding areas. Their abundance swings from year to year depending on the northern food supply.
Females and all first-year birds are brown with a bold white eyebrow and heavy streaking below. Young males look exactly like females through their first spring and only take on the raspberry wash after their second summer, so streaky birds usually outnumber red ones.
Other birds you might be looking at instead.
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