All species › Passerines › Cardinals and allies › Painted Bunting
Position in the tree Birds Aves › Birds with a flexible palate Neognathae › All other modern birds Neoaves › Landbirds Telluraves › Falcons, parrots and passerines Australaves › Falcons and passerines Eufalconimorphae › Parrots and passerines Psittacopasserae
Painted Bunting | Passerina ciris
Purpergors | Colorín sietecolores
The Painted Bunting is a Passerina bunting in which the male has a blue head, a green back and red underparts; the female is uniformly green. It breeds in the southern United States and northern Mexico and winters from Mexico to Panama, in Florida and in Cuba and the Bahamas. In the guide area it is mainly a winter visitor to seed-rich scrub and forest edges.
Voice
The song is a sustained, fairly high and melodious warble of short, rapid whistled notes, somewhat flatter in tone than that of Indigo Bunting. The call is a sharp, metallic chip or pwich.
Recording: Sue Riffe — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12–14 cm. A small bunting with a short, conical bill. The adult male has a blue-purple head with a red eye-ring, a yellow-green mantle, a red rump and red throat and underparts; wings and tail dark with red and green edges. The female is uniform bright green above and greenish yellow below, with a narrow pale eye-ring and no streaks or wing bars. First-year males resemble the female, sometimes with a few blue or red feathers.
Confusion species
The female Orange-breasted Bunting Passerina leclancherii (Pacific slope of south-western Mexico) has a bluish tinge on the rump and tail and purer yellow underparts. Females of Indigo Bunting Passerina cyanea, Lazuli Bunting Passerina amoena and Varied Bunting Passerina versicolor are brown or greyish brown and lack the green. Green vireos and warblers have a thin bill.
Habitat
Breeds in riverside thickets, thorn scrub, forest edges and overgrown fields. In winter in rank, seed-rich vegetation: forest edges, secondary scrub, tall grassy fields, field margins and gardens, mainly in the lowlands up to about 1500 m. It keeps hidden low in the vegetation and eats mostly seeds, in the breeding season also insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Breeds in the southern United States (a western population from Texas to Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas and an eastern one along the Atlantic coast) and in northern Mexico, south to Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. Winters from Sinaloa and southern Tamaulipas throughout Mexico and Central America to western Panama, and in southern Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas. After breeding, part of the western population moults in north-western Mexico before moving on.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In winter found in rank, seed-rich vegetation along forest edges and roadsides in the lowlands, for example on the Yucatán Peninsula; often in company with Indigo Buntings. In gardens it visits feeders with seed.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Widespread, but numbers in the eastern part of the breeding range have declined; in Mexico and Central America many birds are trapped for the cage-bird trade.
Scientific name
Passerina ciris | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Emberiza ciris; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Passerina was introduced in 1816 by Vieillot. Passerina comes from the Latin passerinus 'sparrow-like', from passer 'sparrow'. ciris is the Latin name of a mythical bird, from the Greek keiris, an unidentified bird. The specimen the first description was based on came from South Carolina.