Colorful Male Painted Bunting Amelia Island, Florida September 2011
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. (September 22, 2011) — What is North America’s most colorful song bird?
The handsome fellow is the male Painted Bunting, and lucky Amelia islanders have the opportunity to get a glimpse of this wild beauty right here in Fernandina Beach. (If you have no luck spotting one outdoors, then at least see what you’re missing here in this video below, filmed September 19, 2011 at a birdfeeder.)
With bright blue head, red breast, and green plumage on its back and wings, this wild bird looks more like one you’d see in a pet shop. In fact, due to their beautiful colors, they are reportedly targeted by those in the caged bird trade (catching wild birds is still legal in Mexico and some other countries, but illegal in the USA.) The Eastern population of Painted Buntings are said to be in decline because of both caged bird trade and loss of habitat.
TOURIST TIP: Where Visitors Can Go to Potentially Spot Painted Buntings on Amelia Island
Bring binoculars and some patience! Public lands on the barrier island for birdwatching opportunities are:
1. Fort Clinch State Park (the official “gateway” to the Great Florida Birding Trail), with over 1,300 acres (enter the state park’s main entrance from Atlantic Avenue, not far from Main Beach Park in Fernandina).
2. Amelia Island Plantation resort (located on the southend of the island, along First Coast Highway) is also on the Great Florida Birding Trail, and offers birding excursions and a Nature Center.
3. Egans Creek Greenway lists the Painted Bunting as summer resident with frequency of sightings ”common” (i.e. several sightings a week). The main Egans Greenway access with restrooms is behind the Fernandina Beach Rec Center on Atlantic Avenue in Fernandina Beach.
4. The other state park for birdwatching is located on the southend, the Amelia Island State Park (First Coast Highway/A1A with park entrance near the southend bridge).
Painted Buntings like barrier islands and may hang around here on Amelia into October. The multi-colored male is the singer, the green seen in this video is probably a female (but as juveniles they are both green). This video features a second year male Painted Bunting not quite done molting into his brilliant adult plumage. ‘
Tips to Attract Painted Buntings to Backyard Birdfeeders in Breeding Range
The species likes “shrub-scrub vegetation,” such as hedges, bushes, small trees, undergrowth, and placing a birdfeeder in close proximity to some cover vegetation may help to attract these birds. Their favorite bird seed is white proso millet. The seed is often one of the main ingredients in many wild bird seed mixes, but you may have to special order bags of pure white millet online as most big box retailers don’t sell it. Or, purchase a seed mix from Walmart, Lowe’s, or Home Depot in your area and use a colander or strainer to separate the white millet (that’s what I did).
Breeding Patterns of Eastern Population of Painted Buntings
Eastern Painted Buntings are said to summer here in northeast Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. The Eastern population reportedly “migrate south between mid-October and mid-November.” Eastern Painted Buntings fly to central and southern Florida, Cuba or the Yucatan penisula of Mexico to breed/nest,” according to researchers of the species at the University of North Carolina. When spring arrives, they head back north around mid-April.
Florida is the only state that consistently has a breeding population in the spring and summer (in northeast Florida) and a wintering population (mostly in central and south Florida),” according to PBOT website.
However, Amelia Island is unique in that it is “one of the few places in Florida that can host Painted Buntings in the winter and during spring/summer breeding season,” according to Leah Fuller, Program Coordinator of the Painted Bunting Observer Team at the University of North Carolina. “Most Painted Buntings head north to the Carolinas and Georgia to breed, but Amelia Island has been known to have full-time resident populations in the past,” said Ms. Fuller.
In my personal experience, however, the Painted Buntings have not visited my birdfeeder in the winter here on Amelia Island. My feeder has been visited in spring for a short stint – just a few days — but much more in early fall (September into October). This month both green and the colorful male Painted Bunting (second year males still molting into their adult plumage) have been daily visitors, frequenting the birdfeeder at least half a dozen times throughout the day.
Want to help ornithologists with Painted Bunting research? If you live in Florida, Georgia, or the Carolinas, you can offer bird sightings at your feeder to the researchers by becoming a volunteer “citizen scientist,” part of the Painted Bunting Observer Team. Note that there is another separate breeding population of Painted Buntings in the midwest USA (Kansas and Missouri south to Texas and Louisiana).
Read more about birding on Amelia Island.
Avid birders may like to know a new birder movie about a competition to spot North America’s rarest birds will debut in theatres in mid-October 2011, based on the book, The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik. Even if you’re not into bird watching, with a cast featuring Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson, the comedy is sure to lure a mixed audience. The story is about three avid birders who saw 700+ species during a one-year adventure. For more info about the Twentieth Century Fox movie, watch the trailer The Big Year.
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