Bird name:

Painted Bunting

Passerina ciris

Order

PASSERIFORMES

Family

Cardinals and Grosbeaks (Cardinalidae)

Code 4

PABU

Code 6

PASCIR

ITIS

179156

Breeding Location:

Forest edge, Bushes, shrubs, and thickets, Marshes, freshwater, Swamps, Scrub vegetation areas

Breeding Type:

Monogamous

Breeding Population:

Egg Color:

Light blue with red brown markings

Number of Eggs:

3 - 5

Incubation Days:

11 - 12

Egg Incubator:

Female

Nest Material:

Stalks, leaves, and grasses.

Migration:

Migratory

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General

Painted Bunting: Beautiful, medium-sized bunting with bronze-green back and bright red rump and underparts. Head and nape are blue. Wings are dark with green shoulder patches. Female has green upperparts, yellow-green underparts and dark wings. Juvenile resembles female but is duller.

Range and Habitat

Painted Bunting: Breeds from Missouri and North Carolina south to the southeastern states and west to New Mexico and Oklahoma. Spends winters from the Gulf coast states southward. Preferred habitats include brushy tangles, hedgerows, briar patches, woodland edges, and swampy thickets.

Breeding and Nesting

Painted Bunting: Three to five light blue eggs with red brown markings are laid in a cup nest made of grass stems, rootlets, and bark strips, lined with moss and hair, and built near the ground in a bush or small tree. Incubation ranges from 11 to 12 days and is carried out by the female.

Foraging and Feeding

Painted Bunting: Eats mostly seeds in winter and insects, spiders, and snails in summer. Forages on the ground; also strips seed from grass stalks or snatches insects from spider webs.

Readily Eats

Safflower, Apple Slices, Suet, Millet, Peanut Kernels, Fruit

Vocalization

Painted Bunting: Song is loud, clear, and variable, consisting of a series of high-pitched musical notes. Call is a sharp, metallic "tsick."

Similar Species

Painted Bunting: Male is unique; female is much greener than other female buntings.

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Bird Call Credits: The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Martyn Stewart, http://www.naturesound.org, Redmond, Washington USA. The reuse or copying of bird calls in this database is strictly forbidden.

Underparts

Belly, undertail coverts, chest, flanks, and foreneck.

Upperparts

Back, rump, hindneck, wings, and crown.

Nape

Also called the hindneck or collar, it is the back of the neck where the head joins the body.

Rump

The area between the uppertail coverts and the back of the bird.

Shoulder

The short feathers overlying the median secondary coverts on the top of the wing. They are located near the back and can be seen as the “first row” of feathers on the birds wing. They are also called marginal coverts and lesser secondary coverts.

4 and 6 letter alpha codes

The four letter common name alpha code is is derived from the first two letters of the common first name and the first two letters of common last name. The six letter species name alpha code is derived from the first three letters of the scientific name (genus) and the first three letters of the scientific name (species). See (1) below for the rules used to create the codes..

Four-letter (for English common names) and six-letter (for scientific names) species alpha codes were developed by Pyle and DeSante (2003, North American Bird-Bander 28:64-79) to reflect A.O.U. taxonomy and nomenclature (A.O.U. 1998) as modified by Supplements 42 (Auk 117:847-858, 2000) and 43 (Auk 119:897-906, 2002). The list has been updated by Pyle and DeSante to reflect changes reported by the A.O.U from 2003 through 2006.

Field Guide to Birds of North America