bullfinches

The AOU retains the Bannaquit as the only member of the Coerebidae, but the most recent evidence associates it with a group of tanager- or finch-like birds that build domed nests, including grassquits probably the closest to the bananaquit, the Orangequit of Jamaica, West Indian "bullfinches" and the Galapagos finches.

languagehat.com: BANANAQUIT. 2005

A breeze rustled the underbrush and a pair of bullfinches flew up.

Excerpt: A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn 2009

In a hedge along a dike, bullfinches pipe their embarrassed music, their soft calls of bloodied regret escaping over their blood-red breasts.

A Year on the Wing TIM DEE 2009

There they'll chirp with scores of robins, squirrels and bullfinches.

eight or nine not-so-orange carp 2009

An orange-man; an emissary from Lola Montes; a dealer in piping bullfinches; and a Cardinal in disguise, with a proposal for a new loan for the Pope, were heard by turns; and each, after a rapid colloquy in his own language, was dismissed by Rafael.

Novels by Eminent Hands 2006

An orange-man; an emissary from Lola Montes; a dealer in piping bullfinches; and a Cardinal in disguise, with a proposal for a new loan for the Pope, were heard by turns; and each, after a rapid colloquy in his own language, was dismissed by Rafael.

Burlesques 2006

‘Will you let me show you how to catch bullfinches down here by the stream?’

Under the Greenwood Tree 2006

Sallying forth with it at these times, far into the country, I seldom returned at night without a string of bullfinches, blackbirds, and linnets hanging in triumph round my neck.

Lavengro 2004

The late frost and the bullfinches had played havoc with his carefully tended Blenheims and Cox's Orange Pippins, but the devil himself looked after the crab-apples.

War Game Price, Anthony 1976

My first impression, that the birds were all canaries, was quite wrong; to my delight I found there were goldfinches painted like clowns in vivid scarlet, yellow, and black; greenfinches as green and yellow as lemon leaves in midsummer; linnets in their neat chocolate-and-white tweed suiting; bullfinches with bulging, rose-pink breasts, and a host of other birds.

My Family and Other Animals Durrell, Gerald, 1925- 1956