The Sparrow and the Bunting

 

The Overlook, Halibut Point State Park

It's been a quiet season for upland birds. The Overlook is the place to check the water and sky for marvels of migration and the winter shoreline. Eyes aloft, Don and I almost stepped on a little creature that burst up from the gravel in a flash of white feathers. Even though it was only the second day of November it had to be a Snow Bunting. How could it have been almost invisible?

Snow Bunting

The bird landed nearby and resumed its industrious search for seeds. On the ground its elegant plumage actually makes excellent camouflage. The conspicuous whiteness only shows when it flies. Here's an example from a previous year.

Snow Buntings in flight

Besides its stunning beauty, the Snow Bunting is a photographer's delight because it's fairly tolerant of people.

The Snow Bunting is the little white speck at the grass line

Don was able to get almost eye to eye with the prize.

The sparrow and the bunting

Interestingly, another bird flew in. It stayed for some time to join in the hunt for seeds. It seemed uncharacteristically comfortable with our presence. I wondered if that was the Snow Bunting's benign influence.

Savannah Sparrow

The newcomer was a Savannah Sparrow. Despite their very different plumage the two birds shared similar outlines and appetites. Why have ornithologists assigned them to separate families? There are spectacular color and pattern variations among the various buntings. Feather distinctions can't be the explanation.

What is the difference between a sparrow and a bunting?

I consulted AI, which said Snow Buntings aren’t sparrows nor true buntings in the family sense, but belong to a different family from both. Because they're more northerly and migratory, they tend to be larger, plumper, and longer-winged than most sparrows.

It acknowledged "they are relatively close relatives."

I took the matter to our local expert Chris Leahy. He replied, "The answer to your bunting question has as much to do with etymology as taxonomy," and supplied this passage from his master work The Birdwatcher's Companion to North American Birdlife, Princeton University Press, 2004. 

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"BUNTING: Standard English name for a large heterogeneous assortment of birds in two families. In British terminology, bunting refers to seed eating birds in the family Emberizidae, which includes the New World sparrows and longspurs. In North America, only three Emberizids, the Lark, Snow and McKay' Buntings, are so named, but the term is also used here for the smaller, brightly colored species in the family Cardinalidae, e.g. Indigo and Painted Buntings. For further untangling of the confusing taxonomy... (more cross-references here)

Lockwood (1993) says that "bunting" literally means (or meant) "a plump or thickset person or creature," and its first recorded use in a bird name c.1300 referred specifically to the prototypically plump Emberizid Corn Bunting of Europe. The Cardinalid buntings are also on the plump side, and one can see how all of this confusion might have begun.