European greenfinch

The greenfinch was described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae under the binomial name Loxia chloris.[4][5] The specific epithet is from khloris, the Ancient Greek name for this bird, from khloros, "green".[6]

The finch family, Fringillidae, is divided into two subfamilies, the Carduelinae, containing around 28 genera with 141 species and the Fringillinae containing a single genus, Fringilla, with four species. The finch family are all seed-eaters with stout conical bills. They have similar skull morphologies, nine large primaries, 12 tail feathers and no crop. In all species the female bird builds the nest, incubates the eggs and broods the young. Fringilline finches raise their young almost entirely on arthropods, while the cardueline finches raise their young on regurgitated seeds.[7]

A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2012 found that the greenfinches are not closely related to other members of the genus Carduelis.[8] They have therefore been placed in the resurrected genus Chloris that had originally been introduced by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier in 1800, with the European greenfinch as the type species.[9][10][11]

Subspecies

There are 10 recognised subspecies.[10]

Image	Name and describing authority	Range
	C. c. harrisoni Clancey, 1940	Great Britain (except northern Scotland) and Ireland
	C. c. chloris (Linnaeus, 1758)	Northern Scotland, northern and central France and Norway to western Siberia
	C. c. muehlei Parrot, 1905	Serbia and Montenegro to Moldova, Bulgaria, and Greece
	C. c. aurantiiventris (Cabanis, 1851)	Southern Spain through southern Europe to western Greece
	C. c. madaraszi Tschusi, 1911	Corsica and Sardinia
	C. c. vanmarli Voous, 1952	Northwestern Spain, Portugal and northwestern Morocco
	C. c. voousi (Roselaar, 1993)	Central Morocco and northern Algeria
	C. c. chlorotica (Bonaparte, 1850)	South-central Turkey to northeastern Egypt
	C. c. bilkevitchi Zarudny, 1911	Southern Ukraine, the Caucasus and northeastern Turkey to northern Iran and southwestern Turkmenistan
	C. c. turkestanica Zarudny, 1907	Southern Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan and central Tajikistan

Male above, female below in Ystad.

The European greenfinch is 15 cm (5.9 in) long with a wingspan of 24.5 to 27.5 cm (9.6 to 10.8 in). It is similar in size and shape to a house sparrow, but is mainly green, with yellow in the wings and tail. The female and young birds are duller and have brown tones on the back. The bill is thick and conical.[12] The song contains a lot of trilling twitters interspersed with wheezes, and the male has a "butterfly" display flight. Male greenfinch birds exhibit higher degrees of fluctuating asymmetry. The development of bones of males may be more easily disrupted than that of females.

The protozoal parasite Trichomonas gallinae was known to infect pigeons and raptors, but, beginning in Great Britain in 2005, carcasses of dead European greenfinches and common chaffinches were found to be infected with the parasite.[19] The disease spread and in 2008, infected carcasses were found in Norway, Sweden and Finland and a year later in Germany. The spread of the disease is believed to have been mediated by common chaffinches, as large numbers of the birds breed in northern Europe and winter in Great Britain.[20] In Great Britain, the number of infected carcasses recovered each year declined after a peak in 2006. There was a reduction in the number of European greenfinches from around 4.3 million to around 2.8 million, but no significant decline in the overall number of common chaffinches.[21] A similar pattern occurred in Finland where, after the arrival of the disease in 2008, there was a reduction in the number of European greenfinches but only a small change in the number of common chaffinches.[22]

The English poet William Wordsworth wrote a poem about this species entitled The Green Linnet in 1803.[23][24]

• Cramp, Stanley; et al., eds. (1994). "Carduelis chloris Greenfich". Handbook of the Birds of Europe the Middle East and North Africa. The Birds of the Western Palearctic. Vol. VIII: Crows to Finches. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 548–569. ISBN 978-0-19-854679-5.
• Collar, N.J.; Newton, I.; Clement, P. (2010). "Family Fringillidae (Finches)". In del Hoyo, J.; Elliott, A.; Christie, D.A. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World. Vol. 15: Weavers to New World Warblers. Barcelona, Spain: Lynx Edicions. pp. 440–617. ISBN 978-84-96553-68-2.
• Jobling, James A (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
• Linnaeus, C. (1758). Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. Tomus I. Editio decima, reformata (in Latin). Holmiae:Laurentii Salvii.
• Paynter, Raymond A. Jnr, ed. (1968). Check-list of Birds of the World Volume 14. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Carduelis chloris.

• Audio recordings from Xeno-canto
• Videos and photos from the Internet Bird Collection
• Ageing and sexing by Javier Blasco-Zumeta & Gerd-Michael Heinze Archived 2016-11-08 at the Wayback Machine
• Feathers of European greenfinch (Carduelis chloris) Archived 2018-03-04 at the Wayback Machine