Painted Bunting: What’s in a name?

What does the word “bunting” mean to you? Perhaps it calls to mind a Fourth of July parade and porches adorned with red, white and blue bunting. Or does it bring back memories of that special baseball game and runners advancing on a perfectly executed bunt by your favorite player? 

My “bunting” memories are slightly more esoteric and center around a little-known bird and times spent with my granddad. My mom’s father was, among other things, a bird watcher, and the painted bunting was one of his favorites. He lived on the Black River near Georgetown, South Carolina, and I can still picture his old “Field Guide to the Birds” and the binoculars which were always nearby.

The painted bunting is a small bird that rarely travels north of the Carolinas, and it tends to frequent thick, brushy areas where it isn’t frequently observed. But what a beautiful bird it is. The Spanish refer to painted buntings as “sietecolores,” and the French name for the species is “nonpareil,” which means “without equal.”

 As the Cornell Lab of Ornithology puts it, “…male painted buntings seem to have flown straight out of a child’s coloring book.”

I have seen two male buntings on Daniel Island in the last six weeks, but I could not get a photo either time. My dad has a pair frequenting his bird feeder on Johns Island, too. Like many bird species, the females and first-year males are more plainly colored and are generally a light green to help them blend in with their surroundings.

The painted bunting, Passerina ciris, is a member of the family Cardinalidae, or the cardinals, grosbeaks and buntings. While they winter in Central America, Mexico and southern Florida, their summer breeding range extends northward into Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, and along the East Coast as far north as Georgia and the Carolinas.

The population’s greatest challenges appear to be habitat loss and the capture and sale of buntings as cage birds. Audubon wrote in 1841 about the thousands shipped from Louisiana to Europe each year. This is still happening annually in Mexico and Central America. Left alone in the wild, these birds have been known to live for at least 12 years.

Buntings typically will have one to three broods per year of three to four eggs each, with an incubation of 11 to 12 days. It will take about two weeks after hatching for the young birds, which initially weigh only a 10th of one ounce, to leave the nest. The female builds the nest and initially feeds the young birds, but she sometimes hands the feeding off to the male if there is to be another nesting attempt. She will build a new nest and the male will join her once the young birds have moved out on their own. During courtship and nesting, the male birds are fiercely protective of their territory, and occasionally their fights are even deadly.

The birds I have seen here have been in some of the brushy areas along the Wando leisure trails. Buntings like grass and weed seeds, but eat more insects during the breeding season, perhaps because these are more easily fed to their young. They aren’t overly reclusive, but neither are they easy to get very close to.

Those who have read “Nature Notes” for some time might recall that my older daughter, Claire, sometimes assisted me with photographs for the articles. She now is attending college in Seattle, but when I explained my challenge, she painted a bunting for me. Accompanying this piece is, and please forgive me, her original painted painted bunting. (Sometimes I just can’t help myself!)

Daniel Island Publishing

225 Seven Farms Drive
Unit 108
Daniel Island, SC 29492 

Office Number: 843-856-1999
Fax Number: 843-856-8555

 

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