The Afghan Snowfinch also known as Theresa's Snowfinch, is a bird of the sparrow

Sparrow

The sparrows are a family of small passerine birds, Passeridae. They are also known as true sparrows, or Old World sparrows, names also used for a genus of the family, Passer...

 family and is an Afghan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

 endemic

Endemic (ecology)

Endemism is the ecological state of being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, all species of lemur are endemic to the...

 found only in the Hindu Kush

Hindu Kush

The Hindu Kush is an mountain range that stretches between central Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. The highest point in the Hindu Kush is Tirich Mir in the Chitral region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.It is the westernmost extension of the Pamir Mountains, the Karakoram Range, and is a...

. The species was named by Richard Meinertzhagen

Richard Meinertzhagen

Colonel Richard Henry Meinertzhagen CBE DSO was a British soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist.- Background and youth :Meinertzhagen was born into a socially connected, wealthy British family...

 after his cousin and companion, Theresa Clay, who was an expert on bird lice.

It is 13.5–15 cm long. The male is grey-brown with some white in the wings and a black face mask and two pronged patch on the throat. The female is a buff-tinged brown, with a weaker, greyer face mask and less white in the wings. There are short dark streaks on the mantle and a white subterminal band on the tail feathers other than the central pair. There is white on the upperwing coverts, secondaries and the inner primaries. The male has a brick red iris. It forms large flocks in winter, sometimes mixed with White-winged Snowfinch, Rock Sparrow and larks. The flight is heavy and straight. They feed on insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s and small seeds.

They breed in the hollows made by ground squirrel

Squirrel

Squirrels belong to a large family of small or medium-sized rodents called the Sciuridae. The family includes tree squirrels, ground squirrels, chipmunks, marmots , flying squirrels, and prairie dogs. Squirrels are indigenous to the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa and have been introduced to Australia...

s or marmots, lining the nest

Nest

A nest is a place of refuge to hold an animal's eggs or provide a place to live or raise offspring. They are usually made of some organic material such as twigs, grass, and leaves; or may simply be a depression in the ground, or a hole in a tree, rock or building...

with hair and feathers. The alarm call is a sharp tsi and they make soft quaak calls in flight and a stridulating zig-zig.