Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

Painted bunting breed­ing range is di­vided into a west­ern and an east­ern population.​The west­ern pop­u­la­tion ranges from Kansas south to Louisiana and Texas. The east­ern pop­u­la­tion is lim­ited to the coastal re­gions of North Car­olina south to north­ern Florida. The west­ern pop­u­la­tion win­ters pri­mar­ily in Mex­ico and as far south as Panama. The east­ern pop­u­la­tions win­ter in south­ern Florida, in­clud­ing the Florida Keys, and are oc­ca­sion­ally seen to win­ter in the Ba­hamas and Cuba (Lowther et al. 1999).

• Biogeographic Regions
• nearctic
  • native
• neotropical
  • native

Habi­tat

The west­ern pop­u­la­tion's breed­ing habi­tat con­sists of par­tially open areas scat­tered with brush, ri­par­ian thick­ets and shrub­bery. The east­ern pop­u­la­tion's breed­ing habi­tat con­sists of scrub com­mu­ni­ties and the mar­gins of mar­itime ham­mocks.

Win­ter­ing habi­tat is sim­i­lar for both the west­ern and east­ern pop­u­la­tions, con­sist­ing of trop­i­cal for­est mar­gins and trop­i­cal sa­vanna.

For­ag­ing habi­tat is the same as ei­ther their breed­ing or win­ter­ing habi­tat. Dur­ing mi­gra­tion for­ag­ing can occur in mixed flocks with in­digo buntings

(Kauf­mann 1996, Lowther et al. 1999).

• Terrestrial Biomes
• savanna or grassland
• scrub forest

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Painted buntings are small brightly col­ored birds. They are 12 to 13cm in length with an av­er­age body weight of 16 grams. Adult birds are di­mor­phic, the males being brightly col­ored. The head and nape of the males is blue, the back is bronze-green and the rump and un­der­parts are red.​The fe­males are less bril­liantly col­ored hav­ing dark green­ish up­per­parts and yel­low-green underparts.​The wings and tail of both the male and fe­male are dark brown or black con­trast­ing with the rest of the body. The feet and legs, eyes and bill of both sexes are dark in color. The feet and legs are dull to dusky brown, the eyes are dark brown to hazel and the bill is dark brown to black­ish in color. Plumage of ju­ve­nile birds re­sem­bles that of the adult fe­male. The males dif­fer­en­ti­ate from the fe­males dur­ing their sec­ond year where they begin to ex­hibit the blue feath­ers on their head (Lowther et al. 1999).

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Range mass

  13 to 19 g

  0.46 to 0.67 oz

Re­pro­duc­tion

The breed­ing sea­son be­gins in late April through to early Au­gust peak­ing mid-May through to mid-July. Males usu­ally ar­rive at the breed­ing ter­ri­tory one week be­fore the fe­males. Pairs are usu­ally monog­a­mous with rare in­stances of polyg­yny. Nests are lo­cated in low lying veg­e­ta­tion. The nests are built by the fe­males and woven into the sur­round­ing veg­e­ta­tion for strength. The fe­males raise two broods per sea­son lay­ing be­tween 3 and 4 eggs per brood. The eggs are in­cu­bated for a pe­riod of 11 days until the al­tri­cial young hatch. Parental care of the young is solely the fe­male's re­spon­si­bil­ity until fledg­ing oc­curs 12-14 days later . Time be­tween fledg­ing in the first nest to the sec­ond nest is around 30 days (Kauf­man 1996; Lowther et al. 1999).

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• oviparous

• Average eggs per season

  4

  AnAge

• Average time to hatching

  11 days

  AnAge

Lifes­pan/Longevity

• Average lifespan
  Status: wild

  126 months

  Bird Banding Laboratory

Be­hav­ior

Painted buntings are a so­cial species where males are in­volved in vocal ex­changes last­ing for 30 sec­onds or more. The song serves as a means for self ad­ver­tise­ment and/or ter­ri­tory de­fense dur­ing the mat­ing sea­son when the males be­come highly ter­ri­to­r­ial. Young male buntings tend to wan­der until their own breed­ing ter­ri­tory can be es­tab­lished.

Painted buntings use a va­ri­ety of vi­sual dis­plays (up­right dis­play, body-fluff dis­play, bow dis­play and wing-quiver dis­play) es­pe­cially dur­ing ag­o­nis­tic be­hav­ior and courtship dis­plays dur­ing the mat­ing sea­son. Other forms of dis­play are in­cor­po­rated into unique flight pat­terns such as but­ter­fly flight (slow,un­du­lat­ing flight with deep wing beats) and moth flight (slow de­scend­ing flight that can in­cor­po­rate the wing quiver dis­play). The ma­jor­ity of the dis­plays are ex­hib­ited by the males.

Main preda­tors of painted buntings are snakes, pri­mar­ily the coach­whip snake (Mas­ti­cophis fla­gel­lum), com­mon king snake (Lam­pro­peltis getu­lus), racer (Col­u­ber con­stric­tor) and the rat snake (Elaphe ob­so­leta). Preda­tory re­sponse in­cludes alarm calls and fran­tic flut­ter­ing.

Painted buntings are noc­tur­nal, short to medium dis­tant mi­grants. Fall mi­gra­tion runs from the end of July to mid Oc­to­ber and the re­turn trip in spring be­gins early April and lasts until mid May. The west­ern pop­u­la­tions un­dergo a mid-mi­grant molt in south­ern Ari­zona and north­ern Mex­ico (out­side of both thier breed­ing and win­ter­ing habi­tat) be­fore reach­ing thier win­ter­ing grounds in Mex­ico and Cen­tral Amer­ica. The east­ern pop­u­la­tion molts prior to mi­gra­tion and trav­els di­rectly to their win­ter­ing grounds in south­ern Florida, the Ba­hamas and Cuba.

(Lowther et al. 1999)

• Key Behaviors
• flies
• motile

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

• Perception Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic
• chemical

Food Habits

Painted buntings are di­ur­nal for­agers, mainly feed­ing on grass seeds (Pan­icum spp., Ama­ran­thus spp., Ox­alis spp., Eu­phor­bia spp. and Carex spp.) when in the win­ter­ing habi­tat and arthro­pods (grasshop­pers[Or­thoptera], cater­pil­lars [Lep­i­doptera lar­vae], spi­ders [Arach­nida] and snails [Gas­tropoda]) in their breed­ing habi­tat. The ma­jor­ity of food is for­aged from the ground with some seeds being taken di­rectly from the grass stalk. Painted buntings have also been ob­served steal­ing prey caught in spi­der webs (Kauf­mann 1996; Lowther et al. 1999).

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Painted buntings are highly de­sired as caged birds due to their brightly col­ored plumage. Painted buntings are trapped and sold in large num­bers in Cen­tral Amer­ica and ex­ported from New Or­leans , by ship, to Eu­rope where they are sold for greatly in­flated prices. (Lowther et al. 1999)

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

Over­all there has been a gen­eral de­cline in painted bunting num­bers since the mid 1960's. Their de­sir­abil­ity as caged birds and loss of habi­tat is the pri­mary cause of their de­cline. Painted Buntings are still trapped and sold in Cen­tral Amer­ica and trans­ported over-seas by ship. Habi­tat de­struc­tion con­sti­tutes the main rea­son for their de­cline. De­vel­op­ment of coastal swamp thick­ets and wood­land edges has sig­nif­i­cantly re­duced their east­ern coastal habi­tats. The loss of mid-mi­gra­tory stag­ing areas (ri­par­ian habi­tat) in south­west USA and in north­west Mex­ico have con­tributed to the west­ern pop­u­la­tion de­cline. To a lesser ex­tent brood par­a­sitism by cow­birds (Molothrus ) con­tributes to the Painted bunting's de­cline. The painted bunting is cur­rently listed on Part­ners in Flight Watch­list as a species of spe­cial con­cern (Kauf­mann 1996, Lowther et al. 1999).

Painted buntings are listed as near-threat­ened by the IUCN, and they are pro­tected by the U.S. Mi­gra­tory Bird Act.

• IUCN Red List

  Near Threatened
  More information

• US Migratory Bird Act

  Protected

• US Federal List

  No special status

• CITES

  No special status

• State of Michigan List

  No special status

Other Com­ments

Painted buntings are also known by the French as Passerin non­pareil mean­ing with­out equal (Lowther et al. 1999). "Ac­cord­ing to an Amer­i­can In­dian leg­end, when the great spirit was giv­ing all the birds thier col­ors, he ran short of dye so he gave the very last one, the painted bunting, a coat of many col­ors made from dabs of what­ever was left." (Pope 1991)

Con­trib­u­tors

Doug Ste­fanyk (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Al­berta, Cindy Paszkowski (ed­i­tor), Uni­ver­sity of Al­berta.

Ref­er­ences

Kauf­mann, K. 1996. Lives of North Amer­i­can Birds.. New York: Houghton Mif­flin Com­pany.

Lowther, P., S. Lanyon, C. Thomp­son. 1999. Passe­rina ciris (Painted Bunting). A Poole, F Gill, eds. The Birds of North Amer­ica, No. 398. Wash­ing­ton, D.C.: The Acad­emy of Nat­ural Sci­ences, Philadel­phia, PA, and The Amer­i­can Or­nithol­o­gists' Union.

Lowther, P., S. Lanyon, C. Thomp­son. 1999. The Birds of North Amer­ica. The Amer­i­can Or­nithol­o­gists' Union, 398: 1-21.

Pope, J. 1991. Book of North Amer­i­can Birds. Pleas­antville, New York/Mon­treal: The Read­ers Di­gest As­so­ci­a­tion, Inc.