By Laura Lance
September 17, 2023

The first time I saw a painted bunting was in the mid-1980s while tagging along with my brother, who was birdwatching in some fields and woods adjacent to his home near Wagner, SC. The sighting was actually more of a glimpse than a look, as the bird — first detected by my brother through its song — disappeared as quickly as it appeared in a flash of color flown from one leafy canopy to another. 

The second time I saw a painted bunting was thirty years later, in 2016. Looking out the window one April morning, I saw something curious and said. “Why does that bird have a green leaf stuck to its back?”

Looking through the binoculars I saw that it wasn’t a leaf, but a brilliant patch of lime-colored feathers on the most fantastically colored bird I’d ever seen. “A painted bunting!” I exclaimed. I quickly took photos to document the sighting. These, below, were the least blurry of the batch. 

I shared the photos with my brother and fellow birdwatching friends who urged me to keep my eyes peeled for the female, who should arrive any day. Sure enough, she arrived a week later — a small parrot-green bird with breast feathers in shades of yellow and peach that, at times, seemed to emanate a light, like a sunrise. 

Since then, the painted buntings have returned every year. They have also increased in numbers. In 2018, two pairs came to the feeders. More arrived in subsequent years. I could never completely confirm the numbers. They are quick little birds and quick to flit away at the slightest disturbance. There were enough of the birds, tho, that I began referring to them as a colony of painted buntings.

This year, I finally confirmed a total of five males. How did I do this? I spent the first week or so after their arrival studying the birds, trying to memorize the color variations and subtle shape differences of each bird. Some are roundish, others more sleek and elongated; some have vivid red breasts, and others tend toward orange; the color patches on different birds vary in size and shape. No two painted buntings are alike! Through observing, I’d already determined that we had at least four different males, but I suspected more. Then one day, the implausible happened. All five males arrived to the feeding area at once, confirming my suspicions. The photo below, taken by iPad, doesn’t prove the existence of one, much less five painted buntings, but I post it here to preserve the moment.

Each spring, the first male painted buntings arrive like clockwork around April 14-16. One to three weeks later the first female arrives. The birds are always famished on arrival and spend long, long spells at the feeders. This is the only time I’ve seen them refuse to budge when other birds approach the feeder or try to bully them away.

So where is the mystery? It happens sometime in July. The buntings disappear entirely from the feeders. Each time this has happened, including this year, I’ve been alarmed and saddened, thinking something must have happened to the birds. And each time, including this year, the buntings reappeared to the feeders in late August or early September. The only difference this year is that I’ve slowed down enough to give the matter some thought, record their return on the calendar, and do a bit of research. 

I don’t have a definitive answer to the mystery, just a pretty good idea, courtesy of several sources, including the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology site. As it turns out, painted buntings spend most of the year eating seeds from the fields, marshes and, as available, bird-feeders. During breeding season, however, they switch to spiders and insects such as caterpillars, wasps, flies, grasshoppers, weevils and beetles, which they feed to their young. During breeding season, they also tend to forage higher in the trees, sometimes 30 feet off the ground. 

When the buntings returned to the feeders this year in early September, they were in full molt, looking disheveled and moth-eaten. Their feathers have since mostly come in, and the males are back to vividly colored perfection. Soon, they’ll be ready to make their return to Cuba and other points south where they’ll spend the winter.

The females and young have been all but absent this year. I do remain a little concerned, especially since a wave of avian pox swept through in mid-summer, forcing me to take the feeders down for two weeks. I’ve decided that, rather than worry over their plight, I’ll assume this to be another mystery that might be solved one year.

For now, I know that the original five males appear to have survived the summer, including the one with the dangling, deformed leg, who has been here for two summers now, answering the question, “Do the same birds return every year?” It appears they may. 

________________

`