Rustic Bunting (Emberiza rustica latifascia)
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco County, CA
08 December 2014
Joseph Morlan

Photos © 05 December 2014 by Joseph Morlan. All rights reserved. Click here for higher resolution image.

This bird was found by Alan Hopkins on 06 December and photographed by John Facchini the next day. This morning the bird was well seen again so I arrived about 11:00am. A small group of birders was gathered at the southwest corner of Martin Luther King and Nancy Pelosi Drives. I noticed people pointing up into the trees so rushed over. Ken Schneider kindly pointed the bird out to me and I saw it well with my binoculars. However when I went to get my spotting scope, the bird flew and was not refound for the next hour when it appeared on the ground in an open patch near the road. Ken Schneider spotted it and pointed it out to the assembled group. Here I was able to get a couple of digiscoped images as seen here. About an hour later the bird appeared in some cut brush piles where I had excellent scope views, but managed only one bad photo.

Description

The following description is based on memory and on photos:

A medium sized sparrow-like bird, similar in size and shape to a White-crowned Sparrow, but with a very different face patter and bushy crest. The bill was short and stubby, horn colored with a straight culmen. The head was boldly marked with a bushy brown crest, darkest at the tip, and a dark brown face mask with a bold buffy round spot at the rear of the ear coverts and a smaller pale spot at the bottom rear of the auriculars. The supercilium wrapped around the head forming a buffy coronal band, similar to a skylark. The mustache was rich buff and contrasted with bold black lateral throat stripes. The underparts were white with bold rusty-brown streaks down the sides and flanks, and also down the middle of the chest where they formed a "V" shaped streaky area. The mantle was gray-brown with bold dark mantle streaks. The wings were brown with a strong white median wing-bar and a fainter white greater covert bar. Median coverts were contrasting black. Greater coverts were black centered with broad brownish outer webs. The inner three greater coverts were tipped in buff while the remaining were tipped in white, forming a white wing-bar. Tertials were dark centered with a large black bulge at the base which extended asymmetrically onto the outer web. Primary projection was short, with three visible primaries beyond the folded tertials. Uppertail coverts, strongly rust. Tail was brown with narrow white outer rectrices visible in flight. Legs and feet were bright pink.

Identification

The asymmetric dark bases to the tertials are diagnostic of Emberiza buntings and eliminate any similar sparrows. The pale spot at the rear of the ear coverts and white wing bars are characters useful in separating Rustic Bunting from Reed Bunting (vagrant to Alaska) which lacks those marks and has buffy wing bars in Fall and Winter. It also lacks the bushy crest, characteristic of Rustic Bunting.

Discussion

California has four previously accepted records:
07-08 Jan 1984, Stone Lagoon HUM
25-27 Nov 1988, Half Moon Bay SM
07-10 Nov 1993, Cantil KER
23 Dec 1995-17 Mar 1996, Hoopa HUM

Age, sex and subspecies.

Other photos show the rectrix tips to be pointed suggesting this is a young (HY) bird. Although aging and sexing of autumn birds is not usually recommended, this individual seems to be a close match to the young male in plate 5 of the Bird Banding Manual - Identification Guide to Japanese Birds (1982). Two subspecies are recognized. Nominate E. r. rustica ranges across northern Eurasia east to China and Japan. It is replaced by E. r. latifascia in the Russian Far East to Kamchatka. All North American specimens are attributed to latifascia which has a blacker crown and broader ventral streaks cf. nominate.

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