Amelia Island Wildlife: Male Painted Bunting, North America's Most Colorful Songbird

The most colorful songbird in North America, the male Painted Bunting has been a regular at this bird feeder, here in Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island, Florida. The eastern population of Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris) has a breeding range in the eastern U.S. restricted to a small portion of the Atlantic Coastal Plain of four southeastern states -- North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The Painted Buntings in North Carolina and Florida are reportedly mainly coastal, while they go much further inland in Georgia and South Carolina. They apparently like sea islands, so Amelia Island fits. Featured in this video is a male Painted Bunting with blue head, bright red breast, green and yellow elsewhere. ( A female Painted Bunting looks very different -- its all green.) The Painted Bunting Observer Team, PBOT (www.paintedbuntings.org), is asking for volunteers (dubbed citizen scientists) to record sightings of these beautiful birds. Anyone who sees these birds is invited to report the data to the PBOT group at the Department of Environmental Studies at University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW).

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Pets & Animals

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• painted bunting
• male painted bunting
• birdwatcher
• birds
• florida birds
• amelia island birds
• fernandina beach birds
• birdwatching
• north american birds
• colorful song birds
• colorful American birds
• southeast birds