General

Rustic Bunting: Medium-sized bunting with bright chestnut-brown upperparts streaked with black on back. Throat and belly are white, breast band is cinnamon-brown, and sides and flanks are streaked. Black head has slight crest and thick white eyebrow. Tail is dark brown with white edges. Female and winter adults have chestnut-brown rumps, brown crowns and cheeks, and white underparts streaked with brown. Juvenile is duller overall and has darker brown streaks.

Range and Habitat

Rustic Bunting: This is a Eurasian species. During its migration, this bird regularly visits the Aleutian archipelago and other islands in the Bering Sea. It occurs casually along the Pacific coast to California. Preferred habitats include coniferous forests, riparian thickets, wet taiga, scrub, and brushy areas.

Breeding and Nesting

Rustic Bunting: Four to five light blue or green eggs with dark markings are laid in a cup nest made of grass, moss, and stems, lined with finer grass, hair, roots, and feathers, and built on the ground atop a grassy tussock, tree roots, or low in a shrub. Incubation ranges from 11 to 13 days and is carried out by both parents.

Foraging and Feeding

Rustic Bunting: Eats insects and seeds. Forages on the ground and gleans insects from low vegetation.

Readily Eats

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

Vocalization

Rustic Bunting: Song is a gentle, trilled, gurgling warble. Call is abrasive "sit" or "tsip."

Similar Species

Rustic Bunting: Rare vagrant. Little Bunting, also a rare vagrant, is smaller, has shorter legs, rust-brown crown and cheeks, and lacks short crest.