Chestnut Bunting

The chestnut bunting is a fairly small bunting, 14–15 cm long, of the East Palearctic. The tail is fairly short with little or no white on the outer feathers. Breeding males have bright chestnut-brown upperparts and head with a yellow breast and belly streaked on the sides, while the female is mostly dull brown with dark streaks above and mainly pale yellow underparts; non-breeding males are similar but duller, with the chestnut partly hidden by pale feather fringes (Wikipedia, general species account).

It breeds in Siberia, northern Mongolia and north-eastern China, inhabiting open forest with plenty of ground cover and shrubs, and is a long-distance migrant, wintering in southern China, south-east Asia and north-east India. The variable, high-pitched song is given from a perch low in a tree, and the call is a short zick, like the little bunting's. SoIB 2023 lists it as a winter migrant of open habitat that eats invertebrates, without a priority category (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).