Bunting Bird
A Guide To The Bunting Bird And His Antics
There are four common bunting bird species to be seen in North America, and these little finches are quite a sight to behold. Tiny and ever so hardy, the snow bunting bird is an artic dwelling finch who nests in the crevices of rocks and cliffs. The coloration of the snow bunting bird is mostly pure white, with the male displaying patches of deep brown to black, which are striking against the snow white solid. The female, as per the normal avian tendency, is a more dull and drab version of her male counterpart, as her white seems slightly tarnished and her darker patches much less stark. This species of bunting bird will seldom descend lower than the northern half of Canada, but live in the hearts of bird enthusiasts of every region.
The painted bunting is a bird of the opposite extreme, never venturing further than upper Florida to the east and middle Arizona to the west. The habitat choices of the bunting bird tend to make those of us in the middle wonder what we did wrong, to be denied the grace of this finch’s presence at our feeders. The painted bunting is extraordinarily beautiful, and unmistakable when viewed even by the novice. The male persuasion of this little finch has a red belly and chest, all the way up to the nape of his beak. His head and the rest of his neck are blue, and his back and wings red. Tipped with soft brown at the ends of his wings and feathers, his red eyes pop out of the brilliant blue head. The female, poor girl, is basically a pale, tarnished green speckled with brown. She doesn’t seem to mind his getting all of the attention, but when he is captured it most certainly affects her future.
Mainly in Mexico, the male painted bunting bird is hunted and seized for a big price, destined for sale in the captive bird trade. This immoral conduct, splitting the male of the species from the female without chance of reproduction, has become a major threat to the survival of this species in the wild, and in captivity so it would seem.
The indigo bunting bird is the only native bunting who heads as far northeast as Michigan and Minnesota. All buntings are songbirds, and this tiny blue babe is a wonderfully welcomed sight when the winter breaks to the north. Another species of bunting bird, the varied bunting, rarely heads north of the Mexican border, and is almost black in color during the breeding season. Oddly enough, most of the information which has been collected on this rare bunting bird was done so in Texas, focusing on the few of them who venture into the United States during the molting migration.