Yellow-breasted Bunting

The Yellow-breasted Bunting (Emberiza aureola) is an Eurasian passerine bird in the bunting family (Emberizidae).

This bird is similar in size to a Reed Bunting, but longer-billed. The breeding male has bright yellow underparts with black flank streaks, brown upperparts, black face and throat bar, and a pink lower mandible. The female has a heavily streaked grey-brown back, and less intensely yellow underparts. She has a whitish face with dark crown, eye and cheek stripes. The juvenile is similar, but the background colour of the underparts and face is buff.

The call is a distinctive zick, and the song is a clear tru-tru, tri-tri.

It breeds in northeastern Europe and across northern Asia. It is migratory, wintering in southeast Asia, India, and southern China. It is a rare but regular wanderer to western Europe.

The Yellow-breasted Bunting breeds in open scrubby areas, often near water, and it is very common in Siberia. It lays 4-6 eggs in a nest on the ground. Its food consists of insects when feeding young, and otherwise seeds.

It was formerly classified as a Near Threatened species by the IUCN. But new research has shown it to be rarer than it was believed. Consequently, it is uplisted to Vulnerable status in 2008.