Meet Painted Bunting—Most Colorful Bird Species Indigenous To United States

Jun 02, 2020

The painted bunting is a sight to behold. The small, brightly colored bird is a common bird to spot for those who reside in Mexico and the southern U.S. However, despite being among the most colorful birds, they are hard to spot because they spend most of their time foraging for seeds in low, dense bushes.

For bird feeders, these attractive birds are very popular because they are easy to entice. All you have to do is a feeder lower to the ground near some dense bushes.

Male painted buntings have a beautiful blend of blue, green, red and yellow colors while the females and juveniles have a distinctive green color with pale rings around the eyes. The oldest recorded painted bunting, as reported from a Florida banding study, was at least 12 years old, reports All About Birds.

Many of these attractive songbirds, unfortunately, end up spending most of their lives as cage birds. Despite it being illegal to trap painted buntings in the U.S., these birds are often captured and sold in Latin America, where the practice remains legal, according to Bird Watching Daily.

Painted buntings are divided into western and eastern populations, according to All About Birds. For the western population, fall migration begins before molting in Northern Mexico and Southern Arizona. The migration starts at the end of July and runs to mid-October and returns during spring which starts from April until mid-May. The birds migrate to the wintering grounds in the south, in Mexico and Central America. The eastern population, on the other hand, molt before migration, then travels straight to their wintering habitat.

Painted buntings’ populations breed in semi-open habitats. The birds have different breeding grounds. The breeding population in South-Central US uses abandoned farms, bushy roadsides, woodland strips, grass patches, weeds, and wildflowers.

The birds from the coastal Southeast population breed in wooded back dunes, hedges, yards, fallow fields, and old citrus groves. Both breeding populations have separate wintering grounds although they tend to gravitate towards high grass, overgrown pasture and thickets.

The female painted bunting takes on the role of building the nest, which takes up to two days. All About Birds describes how they choose a spot that is three to six feet off the ground. In case there is no low vegetation, they can go as high as fifty feet. The female painted bunting builds a nest that is firmly attached to a plant for support. She weaves together a combination of bark strips, twigs, leaf skeletons grasses, and weed stems binding them together with cobwebs and sometimes lines the well-constructed nest with horsehair.

Despite the numerous efforts made by conservationists to curb the illegal trade of the painted buntings, they are still illegally sold in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. In 1841, thousands of the colorful birds were caught and shipped from New Orleans to Europe every spring where they were sold for more than 100 times the price, as reported by John James Audubon. According to Audubon, the French named the bird “nonpareil’’ which means “without equal,” a term used to refer to the bird’s splendid plumage.

Although human beings have contributed to the immense reduction of the population of the painted buntings, the biggest threat to these beautiful birds is habitat loss both at their breeding grounds and migration stopover sites. In order to protect these birds, strict rules should be put in place, and those found trapping or selling the birds should be punished. These spectacularly colored and visually impressive birds’ habitats need to be protected to ensure they increase in number.

In your opinion, what measures should be taken in order to prevent these colorful birds from becoming extinct? Let us know in the comments section and pass this informative article along to all your animal-loving friends.