Reed Bunting

Reed Bunting

Reed Bunting: Medium-sized finch with dark-streaked brown upperparts and faintly streaked, white underparts. Head and throat are black; moustache stripe and collar are distinctly white, and tail is white-edged. Short, low flights, alternates rapid wing beats with wings pulled to sides.

● Song: "shreep-shreep-teeree-tititick"

● Foraging & Feeding: Reed Bunting: Eats seeds, but also takes insects and other invertebrates, especially in summer. Forages in reeds, rushes, and riparian-thickets in summer, and in wet meadows, pastures, farmlands, and open country in winter.

● Breeding & nesting: Reed Bunting: Four to six light purple eggs with gray pink marks and splotches are laid in a nest made of dried grass and moss, lined with hair, flowers, and fine grass, and built on the ground sheltered by a small brush or low shrub. Incubation ranges from 12 to 14 days and is carried out mostly by the female.

● Similar species: Reed Bunting: Pallas's Bunting has a smaller straight bill, gray-brown upperparts with brown-black streaks, gray-brown wing coverts, and white behind eye.

Flight Pattern