From Opus

Male
Photo by Pavlik
Saratov area, Russia, June 2004

Emberiza aureola

[edit] Identification

14-15.5 cm
Breeding Male

• Dark rufous-brown upperparts and breast band
• Black face
• Bright yellow underparts
• Large white wing patch on lesser and median coverts
• Pink lower mandible
  

Female

• Paler yellow underparts
• Buffy supercillium
• Greyish-brown upperparts, heavily streaked
• Dark rear eyestripe
• Grey-brown median crown stripe
• White wing bars
• Pink lower mandible

1st summer male
Photo by Pavlik
Saratov area. Russia, June 2004

[edit] Distribution

Breeds in central and south-eastern Finland, although becoming very rare in recent years, and across Russia from about 53N to the southern Kola Peninsula and White Sea. Outside the Western Palearctic breeds widely across Asia to Kamchatka and northern Japan.

Autumn migration begins in late-July and August with most birds wintering from eastern Nepal to southern China and Indochina. Spring passage begins in early-April and arrives on Western Palearctic breeding grounds in early June.

Annual in Norway, Sweden and in Britain (c.218) where the vast majority occur in September with most on Shetland, fewer on the east and south coasts. Numbers have greatly increased in recent years and more are being recorded away from the Northern Isles but Fair Isle, Shetland remains the prime locality. Vagrants also recorded in Spain and Portugal, Latvia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium and in October 1991 in Sinai, Egypt.

[edit] Taxonomy

[edit] Subspecies^[1]

• E. a. aureola:

• Boreal forests of Finland to Bering Sea; winters to Indochina

• E. a. ornata:

• Amur River to Manchuria, North Korea, Kamchatka and Kuril Issland

[edit] Habitat

Open areas, usually close to water with dense shrubs and willow and birch scrub, also forest edges and peat bogs. On passage occurs in cultivated areas, scrubland, sometimes reedbeds.

[edit] Behaviour

[edit] Breeding

A ground-nester, laying 4-6 eggs

[edit] Diet

The diet mainly consists of seeds, but includes insects when rearing a brood.

[edit] Vocalisaton

[edit] References

1. Clements, JF. 2008. The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World. 6th ed., with updates to December 2008. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0801445019. Spreadsheet available at http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist.
2. Bird Guides
3. Wikipedia
4. Collins Bird Guide ISBN 0 00 219728 6

• List of references

[edit] External Links