Measurements
Both Sexes
- Length
- 5.5–6.3 in
14–16 cm - Wingspan
- 13 in
33 cm - Weight
- 0.8–1.2 oz
23–33 g
Other Names
- Rosy Finch (in part)
- Roselin à tête brune (French)
Cool Facts
- It usually takes a female Brown-capped Rosy-Finch one to three days to construct a nest (the male does not help). At one site, however, construction took 18 days because wind completely removed the nest twice. Another female took 11 to 14 days to build her nest because the nest material kept sliding off the sloping nest ledge.
- The Brown-capped Rosy-Finch lines its nest with grass, feathers, and fur. It also has been recorded using, cotton, pieces of cloth, ravelings of burlap, and, in one nest, a piece of blasting fuse.
- Rosy-finches build their nests in crevices where they stay completely in the shade. One Brown-capped Rosy-Finch nest was frozen in ice each night when the water trickling through the site froze.
Habitat
Mountains
Above timberline wherever proper cliffs, caves, rock slides, or old buildings provide nest sites, and where adequate feeding grounds on tundra, rock slides, snowfields, and glaciers are within commuting distance. Winters in open areas, including alpine tundra during fair weather, and in high parks, meadows, and open valleys of grass or open shrubland between mountain ranges.
Food
Seeds
Seeds, insects, and spiders.
Nesting
Nesting Facts
- Clutch Size
- 3–6 eggs
- Egg Description
- White.
- Condition at Hatching
- Helpless with sparse down.
Nest Description
Tightly woven cup of fine grass, stems, and rootlets surrounded by thicker layer of woven coarse stems and roots and mud, lined with grass, feathers, and hair. Placed under large rocks in rockslides and moraines; on rafters in old buildings; on walls of caves, abandoned mines, and railroad tunnels; and most frequently in holes, fissures, and ledges of cliffs.
Nest Placement
Ground
Behavior
Ground Forager
Picks insects and seeds from surface of snow, mud, and tundra.
Conservation
Least Concern
May be declining slightly.
Credits
- Johnson, R. E., P. Hendricks, D. L. Pattie, and K. B. Hunter. 2000. Brown-capped Rosy-Finch (Leucosticte australis). In The Birds of North America, No. 536 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.