I haven't heard anything convincing one way or the other yet, despite
Luke Cole's dismissiveness. He says:
"Judging from the yellow in the throat and back, it is not a bird eating
its natural diet and thus is probably an escaped cage bird. I would
expect the back to be greener, and the throat greener, if this is a young
male molting into adult plumage."

but Steve Mlodinow says:
"The green breast feathers do not likely indicate age. According to Pyle,
when ad male Painted Buntings lose feathers outside of normal moult, they
replace them with bright green until the next moult.", so there seems to
be no reason to assume it is a *young* male.

and Gene Hunn relayed a report that this bird (presumably) has been around
Seattle since at least Feb 10. If it's an escapee, there is no reason to
believe that the bird escaped on that very day, so it may well have been
out and about for a couple of months at least, which means that we probably
can't draw conclusions from the effects of its diet (it's been eating
whatever it's been finding for the last month or more, and may well have
molted in that time).

The question I have is whether a male Painted Bunting should be singing
this time of year. Has anyone heard it sing?

I'd love to see a compilation of arguments, pro and con, rather than a
knowing declaration based on a single point that may rest upon a faulty
assumption.


Jim McCoy
jfmccoy at earthlink.net
Redmond, WA



-----Original Message-----
From: ian paulsen [mailto:ipaulsen at krl.org]
Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2002 10:47 PM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [BIRDWG01] Pictures of Painted Bunting (fwd)