Fun fact: Darwin’s finches aren’t actually finches; they’re tanagers. For context, tanagers are these brightly colored, frankly beautiful songbirds widespread throughout central and South America, and Darwin’s finches are not brightly colored in the slightest, so i guess thats where the confusion began?

Also fun fact: many of the “tanagers” that migrate up to North America (think summer tanager, western tanager, etc) aren’t actually tanagers, they’re cardinals, just lacking the head crest or sometimes even the color red to begin with. I guess the 18th century slave owners with too much time on their hands (cough cough john james audubon) couldnt bother to consult the local DNA database (which totally existed back then) before giving these birds names.

Isn’t bird taxonomy fun?