What is "yellow-breasted bunting"

n. common in Russia and Siberia [syn: Emberiza aureola]

The yellow-breasted bunting (Emberiza aureola) is an Eurasian passerine bird in the bunting family (Emberizidae).

This bird is similar in size to a reed bunting, but longer-billed. The breeding male has bright yellow underparts with black flank streaks, brown upperparts, black face and throat bar, and a pink lower mandible.

The female has a heavily streaked grey-brown back, and less intensely yellow underparts. She has a whitish face with dark crown, eye and cheek stripes. The juvenile is similar, but the background colour of the underparts and face is buff.

The call is a distinctive zick, and the song is a clear tru-tru, tri-tri.

It breeds in north-eastern Europe and across northern Asia. It is migratory, wintering in south-east Asia, India, and southern China. It is a rare but regular wanderer to western Europe.

The yellow-breasted bunting breeds in open scrubby areas, often near water, and is present in Siberia. It lays four to six eggs in a nest on the ground. Its food consists of insects when feeding young, and otherwise seeds.

Until 2004, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature considered the yellow-breasted bunting to be a species of least concern. In 2004, its status was changed to near threatened, and four years later it was uplisted again — to vulnerable — after new research has shown it to be rarer than had been believed. It is subject to heavy hunting pressure in China, through which most specimens pass during migration. In 2013, its assessment changed to endangered.