>Tweets - Came home around noon today and flushed a small bird from the
>side of the house. Got about a three minute look at it from as close
>as ten feet, at times through bins, before it took off. Description
>follows:
>
>All feathers fresh with no apparent damage. Slightly smaller than
>Lapland or Smith's Longspurs with tail shorter than body length.
>Striking Clay-coloured sparrow-type of darker cheek patch but with a
>conspicuous caramel or pale ochre wash over lores. Cheek patch
>bordered above and below by creamy stripes. Rufous brownish stripe
>above pale superciliary line. Suggestion of slightly paler median
>crown stripe. Dark eye. Small, darkish, bill with curved seed-cracking
>type of culmen, not your pipit type of straight bill. Perhaps a darker
>malar streak but not seen well. Underparts creamy white with necklace
>of long chestnut streaks across breast, extending to belly on sides.
>Streaks diffused rather than overly sharp, widest on the breast.
>Dorsum the typical longspur admixture of grays, browns and blacks with
>rufous edgings. Conspicuous butterscotch-hazel streaks, possibly edged
>in black, running from the "shoulders" along each side of mantle to
>rump. Tail dark with possible white edging. Legs not seen well but
>seemed neutral or dark-coloured rather than conspicuously pale. Walked
>rather than hopped.
>
>Best match I could find in my reference books was a female Com. Reed
>Bunting _Emberiza shoeniclus_ in Jonsson. However, could not rule out
>for sure the Little Bunting _E. pusilla_. Did not have the punk hairdo
>of the Rustic Bunting, rather the bird was noticeably round-headed.
>Com. Reed Bunting (also spelled Com. Reed-Bunting) is listed as
>species 870 in the AOU Checklist of N. American Birds, with records
>from Alaska. This will have to go down as just an Old World bunting
>due to the lack of confidence in the identification. Perhaps someone
>has some experience with the palearctic buntings which they could
>share. Stuart? Needless to say, heads up in those grass patches just
>in case this was a flight involving more than a single bird.
>
>Jack Bowling
>Prince George, BC

Jack, were there other reasons to reject Rustic Bunting besides lack of
punk "do," which I don't think is a definitive mark to distinguish this
species? They can hold their feathers down just as easily. Rustic is the
only one of the likely species in which the streaks on the breast are
reddish. Young birds are more streaked than adults, and sometimes only the
latter are illustrated.

Little Bunting is the size of a Savannah Sparrow, distinctly smaller than
the other buntings, as its name implies. I think you wouldn't consider it
near the size of a longspur. Both it and Rustic Bunting skulk in shrubbery
or at the edge of farmland, while Reed Buntings are typically in
marshes--but I suppose a migrant could turn up elsewhere. Of the 3
species, Rustic has the least conspicuous malar stripe, too. Pallas' Reed
Bunting is another possibility to consider.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416