- Emberiza aureola
Identification
The male Yellow-breasted Bunting is unmistakeable, with his startlingly yellow underparts bordered by a black face and divided by a liver-brown breast band. From behind he is the only bunting with a Chaffinch-like white wing bar on the lesser and median coverts. Female and immature birds may be only vaguely yellow on their underparts but even so they are very well-marked. Fawn-coloured stripes on the mantle and head, including bold supercilia and a crown stripe, invite comparison with the even rarer Bobolink from America, but the bunting also has dark ear coverts and prominent pale edges to the median and greater coverts making two pale wing bars. The tertials also have obvious pale edges.
Distribution & Taxonomy
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.
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.
Bird Song
<flashmp3>Emberiza aureola (song).mp3</flashmp3>
Listen in an external program
