Painted Bunting Plumages

Painted Buntings—small, colorful neotropical songbirds—are fairly familiar sights in some portions of the southern United States during the spring and summer.  Although they’re not as abundant in most of these regions as the Indigo Bunting (they outnumber Indigo Buntings in Texas and New Mexico), they still occur in decent numbers.  If you’ve seen Painted Buntings, you are probably most familiar with the adult males, whose vibrant plumage and habit of singing from high perches make them more noticeable than females and immature males.  The typical male Painted Bunting has a blue-violet head, a grass-green back, green wings, and red underparts.

Adult male Painted Bunting

Adult male Painted Bunting -- the head looks purple in the sun.

While adult males may be more obvious, you can also frequently observe females and immature males—if you know what to look for!  Like the males, female Painted Buntings can be attracted to bird feeders, and you can also sometimes see them foraging in vegetation when they’re away from the nest.  They do tend to be more secretive than males, though.  Their plumage is essentially all-over leaf green, which makes them cryptic but also unusual for North American songbirds.

Female Painted Bunting

Adult and immature females look similar, but it might come as a surprise that immature males are also green all over.  Painted Bunting males take two years to achieve their iconic red, green, and blue plumage—a strategy called delayed plumage maturation.  Immature males sometimes manage to breed, but because older males tend to outcompete them for high-quality territories, their breeding success is usually lower.  However, spending this “gap year” to learn how things are done may benefit male Painted Buntings.  In any case, if you see a green Painted Bunting singing, you can be pretty sure that it’s a younger male, probably still learning the ropes.

Singing immature male Painted Bunting

It’s important to note that not all Painted Buntings exhibit textbook plumage patterns.  This male that I saw several years ago in Arkansas had a yellow band across his breast.  He was singing in a stretch of scrubby woods near a river.

Adult male Painted Bunting

The male in the next photo had more of an orange breast than a red one.  It’s possible that he did not consume enough carotenoids during the molting process, although he looks pretty healthy in other ways.  If you’re living somewhere within the Painted Bunting breeding range, be sure to watch for these colorful birds this summer, and make note of any interesting plumages and behaviors that you notice!

Adult male Painted Bunting