Thanks Anita!

I appreciate the clarification, and it’s precisely why I referred to “female-type” plumage at the start of the ID section. As an introductory-level video, I didn’t want to devote too much of the video talking about age-related plumage details given that they don’t really impact the ID between the two species. It can be a tough line to walk between “useful” to a beginner and “technically correct”

​@@LycoBirds Again, I appreciate your video. I agree that getting the species straight is important, but also that even beginners should learn the facts about any species. A simple statement "In Purple Finches young males are brown and look like females" is both simple and factual. :-)

Karen bird watcher

Yeah, definitely often cited as a field mark, and is usually true. I'm always torn on whether to mention that one though because it's so easy for people to focus just on that and mess up the ID. For example, compare macaulaylibrary.org/asset/117200901 with macaulaylibrary.org/asset/191711571 -- I would guess if a relatively inexperienced birder is trying to use tail fork on those two, they are going to get confused in a hurry if they don't have additional field marks to fall back on. And if you use macaulaylibrary.org/asset/44533451 as an example, it barely looks like it has any fork. And then you can get into trouble with the angle, etc. So, I personally don't find that field mark all that useful in many circumstances since there are more reliable traits to use, which is why I often don't mention it at all.

Interesting. Thank you.