One of the largest finches and the one with the longest tail. Wide, robust, and very curved bill with a parrot-like appearance (Psittacidae) (Jaramillo, 2020b), as long as it is wide, meaning short. The tip of the maxilla protrudes from the mandible. Very similar to the Parrot Finch (
Geospiza psittacula), with a larger body size than the latter, and a proportionally shorter bill. More streaked ventrally than the tree finches, it generally has a strongly streaked ventral. In the female, the loral is yellow-whitish, and it has conspicuous streaks on the wing coverts.
A character to differentiate it from the Parrot Finch is that the cutting edge of the bill has a very marked curve at the base, generating a very robust mandible, and the cutting edge continues in an imaginary line passing through the eye. Monotypic.
Geographic Distribution: All Galápagos islands except Darwin, Wolf, Genovesa, and Española, possibly present on Santa Fé (BirdLife International, 2023). Absent on Pinzón and Rábida in recent surveys (2017-18) (Kleindorfer
et al., 2022). Possibly extinct on Floreana (Fessl
et al., 2017). For San Cristóbal, the information is contradictory, as according to BirdLife International (2023) it is not present, but it is mapped by Jaramillo (2020b). On citizen science platforms, most of the records for this species on San Cristóbal are clearly misidentified or, in most cases, without evidence, but in my personal opinion, there are some records that would confirm its presence.
Description extracted from: La Grotteria (2023).
REFERENCESLa Grotteria, J. 2023. Identificación, comentarios y registros personales de pinzones de Darwin. Referencia Orientativa.