General

Reed Bunting Breeding Male: 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. Tail is white-edged. Female has striped brown head and dark-bordered white throat.

Range and Habitat

Reed Bunting: Breeds on the Aleutians off the coast of Alaska.

Breeding and 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.

Foraging and 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.

Readily Eats

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

Vocalization

Reed Bunting: Song is a bold, staccato "shreep-shreep-teeree-tititick"; call is a descending "seeoo" or "ching."

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.