La Palma chaffinch


The La Palma chaffinch, also known as the Palman chaffinch or, locally in Spanish as the pinzón palmero or pinzón hembra, is a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae. It is a subspecies of the common chaffinch that is endemic to La Palma in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago that forms part of Macaronesia in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Taxonomy

Suárez et al. found, in a genetic analysis of chaffinches Fringilla coelebs in the Canary Islands that at least three subspecies are present there: F. c. palmae occurs on La Palma in the western Canary Archipelago, F. c. canariensis on La Gomera and Tenerife. The form on El Hierro is F. c. ombriosa, and a fourth, hitherto undescribed taxon previously assigned to F. c. canariensis, on Gran Canaria. Other Macaronesian subspecies occur in the Azores and on Madeira.