Male painted buntings are spectacularly beautiful birds. There was one down at the water bowl the other day and, as you can see in this clip, they are almost crazily colorful. Red, blue, and yellow-green. The females are also beautiful, but in a more restrained way; they’re a subtle shade of green.
Conventional wisdom is that only male painted buntings sing. Juvenile males look similar to females, so if you see a female painted bunting singing, ergo, it must actually be a juvenile male (because only males sing… do you see where we’re going with this?).
Cornell’s website All About Birds (allaboutbirds.org) confirms that the females don’t sing, but only posts one reference, and it’s from 1976. Now 1976 is quite along time ago, even for people like Dan and me, and in those days, ornithologists assumed that pretty much all female songbirds were songless and that only the males could sing. That’s since been found to be wrong.
We’ve included here a clip of what looks to us like a female painted bunting singing her little birdie heart out. But is she actually a he? What do you guys think?
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