Grosbeak/ˈɡroʊsbiːk/ is a form taxon containing various species of seed-eating passerine birds with large beaks. Although they all belong to the superfamily Passeroidea, these birds are not part of a natural group but rather a polyphyletic assemblage of distantly related songbirds. Some are cardueline finches in the family Fringillidae, while others are cardinals in the family Cardinalidae; one is a member of the weaver family Ploceidae. The word "grosbeak", first applied in the late 1670s, is a partial translation of the French grosbec, where gros means "large" and bec means "beak".
The following is a list of grosbeak species, arranged in groups of closely related genera. These genera are more closely related to smaller-billed birds than to other grosbeaks. The single exception are the three genera of "typical grosbeak finches", which form a group of closest living relatives and might thus be considered the "true" grosbeaks.
Rose breasted grosbeak
Grosbeak finches
The finch family (Fringillidae) contains 13 living species named "grosbeak", which are all part of the large subfamilyCarduelinae:
Typical grosbeak finches
The two Nearctic species in the genusHesperiphona (formerly in Coccothraustes):
The pine grosbeak, Pinicola enucleator, a Holarctic pine forest species
grosbeak goldfinches
The three golden-winged grosbeaks in the genus Rhynchostruthus, found in northern Somalia, mountains of south-west Arabia and on the island of Socotra and often considered a single species:
The São Tomé grosbeak, Neospiza concolor, a critically endangered restricted-range endemic found only in forests on the island of São Tomé off the West African coast, believed extinct until rediscovered in 1996
Two species in the genus Serinus are named "grosbeak-canaries": the Abyssinian grosbeak-canary (Serinus donaldsoni) and the southern grosbeak-canary or Kenya grosbeak-canary (Serinus buchanani). The genus Serinus is somewhat closely related to the golden-winged grosbeaks.
In addition, there are two extinct Fringillidae "grosbeaks":
The Bonin grosbeak (Chaunoproctus ferreorostris), found only on the Ogasawara Islands, which was last recorded in 1832. Its relationships are obscure, but it was probably another member of the cardueline finches.