Pyrrhula

Pyrrhula is a small genus of passerine birds, commonly called bullfinches, belonging to the finch family (Fringillidae).

The Azores bullfinch (P. murina) is a critically endangered species (about 120 pairs remaining), occurring only in the east of the island of São Miguel in the Azores archipelago.

The evolution of the bullfinch species started soon after the pine grosbeak's ancestors diverged from them (at the end of the Middle Miocene, about 12 mya), and it is quite possible that the latter species evolved in North America; what is fairly certain is that the bullfinch radiation started in the general area of the Himalayas.

The genus Pyrrhula was introduced in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson.

[3][4] The name was derived by tautonymy from the binomial name of the Eurasian bullfinch Loxia pyrrhula introduced by Linnaeus in 1758.

P. p. griseiventris from the Kurile Islands , illustrated by William Matthew Hart , 1888