Reed Bunting
Reed Bunting: Medium-sized finch with dark-streaked brown upperparts and faintly streaked, white underparts. Head and throat are black; moustache stripe and collar are distinctly white, and tail is white-edged. Short, low flights, alternates rapid wing beats with wings pulled to sides.
● Song:
"shreep-shreep-teeree-tititick"
● Foraging & Feeding:
Reed Bunting: Eats seeds, but also takes insects and other invertebrates, especially in summer. Forages in reeds, rushes, and riparian-thickets in summer, and in wet meadows, pastures, farmlands, and open country in winter.
● Breeding & nesting:
Reed Bunting: Four to six light purple eggs with gray pink marks and splotches are laid in a nest made of dried grass and moss, lined with hair, flowers, and fine grass, and built on the ground sheltered by a small brush or low shrub. Incubation ranges from 12 to 14 days and is carried out mostly by the female.
● Similar species:
Reed Bunting: Pallas's Bunting has a smaller straight bill, gray-brown upperparts with brown-black streaks, gray-brown wing coverts, and white behind eye.