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Defenders Magazine
Species Spotlight: Painted Bunting
There's no mistaking the aptly named painted bunting with its plumage straight from a preschooler's palette. The male is one of the most colorful songbirds in North America, a fine-feathered fusion of deep blue, bright red and luminous green accented with black.
Distinctive as they are, these small birds—part of the family that includes sparrows, finches and grosbeaks—are tough to spot. In their southern U.S. breeding grounds, painted buntings spend most of their time in brushy thickets along roads, gullies, streams and fields, where they forage for seeds and insects.
Should you spy one, it is likely to be taking advantage of backyard amenities such as feeders and birdbaths—or taking on another male. Pugnacious as they are pretty, male painted buntings use pro-wrestling-worthy moves like pecking, wing-beating and grappling in fights for territory. These all-out battles can cost participants an eye, or even a life.
These days male competition is the least of the threats the painted bunting faces. Loss of habitat plagues them on their breeding grounds. On their wintering grounds in Mexico and the Caribbean, these vibrant, sweet-singing birds are illegally captured by the hundreds to supply the booming exotic pet trade. Long-term data show a range-wide decline in painting buntings of 3.2 percent per year.
Defenders and others are pressing for habitat protection and
for closer monitoring of the trade in painted buntings. The fight is on to
assure the painted bunting a bright future, not just a colorful past.
