The male has a black head, a yellow body, black flight feathers and a stout bright yellow-orange conical bill. The female is a dull greenish-olive but has black flight feathers and a yellow bill. [2]
The oriole finch was formally described in 1843 by the British zoologist Louis Fraser under the binomial nameCoccothraustes olivaceus.[3][4] It is now the only species placed in the genusLinurgus that was introduced by Ludwig Reichenbach in 1850.[5] The exact relationship of this species to other finches is unclear. In their phylogenetic analysis published in 2012, Zuccon and colleagues found that the oriole finch was sister to the genus Serinus.[6] This contrasts with an earlier 2009 analysis by Nguembock and colleagues which found that the oriole finch was sister to the genus Carduelis.[7]
^Clement, Peter; Harris, Alan; Davis, John (1993). Finches and Sparrows. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 210–211. ISBN0-691-03424-9.
^Fraser, Louis (1842). "Coccothraustes olivaceus". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. 10: 144. The volume is dated 1842 on the title page but the article was published in 1843.
^Nguembock, B.; Fjeldså, J.; Couloux, A.; Pasquet, E. (2009). "Molecular phylogeny of Carduelinae (Aves, Passeriformes, Fringillidae) proves polyphyletic origin of the genera Serinus and Carduelis and suggests redefined generic limits". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 51 (2): 169–181. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2008.10.022. PMID19027082.