white winged snowfinch

                                white winged snowfinch

The white-winged snowfinch (Montifringilla nivalis), or just snowfinch, is a small passerine bird. Despite its name, it is a sparrow rather than a true finch.

In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the white-winged snowfinch in his Ornithologie based on a specimen but without specifying where it had been collected. He used the French name Le pinçon de neige ou la niverolle and the Latin Fringilla nivalis.^[2] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.^[3] When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson.^[3] One of these was the white-winged snowfinch. Linnaeus included a brief description, used the binomial name Fringilla nivalis and cited Brisson's work. Linnaeus listed the type location as "America".^[4] The type location was subsequently designated as Switzerland.^[5] The specific name nivalis is Latin for "snowy" or "snow-white".^[6] This species is now placed in the genus Montifringilla that was introduced by the German ornithologist Christian Ludwig Brehm in 1828.^[7]