Painted Bunting, Newport, RI, March 2014

It was early on Monday morning when I received an e-mail from a birding buddy asking if I knew anything about a Painted Bunting that apparently had been reported in RI.  That certainly was news to me, so I sent e-mails to a few of my RI birding contacts to see if they knew anything about it.  Before I had received any responses, I noticed a post on the MASSBIRD listserve summarizing a MA Audubon trip to RI from the previous weekend.  A few sentences into the post they mentioned going to a feeder in Newport to see the stakeout Painted Bunting – they obviously knew something I didn’t.  A little later I was able to reach one of my RI contacts and sure enough she told me that a male Painted Bunting had been appearing at an urban feeder in Newport for over a month.  The homeowner didn’t want big crowds so she didn’t want it publicized, although many birders had heard about it by word of mouth and had seen this quite reliable bird reliable.  I guess I don’t operate in the right birding circles.  My contact said it was OK to go to look for it, and gave me explicit directions to the feeder.  So I called Denny Abbott, and the two of us hatched a plan to go for the Bunting the next day.

We were at the homeowner’s yard by 8 the next morning and started our vigil looking at a feeder in the front yard.  A few minutes later another birder arrived to join the search.  After about 30 minutes, and not seeing much of anything except some Juncos, I contacted another RI birder to get a few more details.  He mentioned that he thought the bird was mostly being seen in the afternoon.  And just as I was hanging up with him, the homeowner came out and welcomed us to her yard, and said that lately she was just seeing the bird near dusk.  Suddenly I wasn’t feeling very optimistic.  She also said it was either coming with Juncos to the feeder out front, or with House Sparrows to the feeder in the back.  We didn’t even know there was a feeder out back – did we miss it there?  Plus I wondered if we missed it in the Junco flock we saw earlier in the front.  So we re-positioned ourselves such that both feeders were almost visible, and continued our wait, ready to go well into the afternoon if needed.

After a few minutes of no activity, suddenly the yard was alive with both a flock of House Sparrows at the back feeder and a flock of Juncos at the front feeder, just as the homeowner described.  Now we needed the Bunting.  Our eyes went from one feeder to the other without luck.  And then I noticed some bright colors in a tree over the front feeder – it was the Painted Bunting!  In a couple minutes it came to the feeder and gave some great views.  I got these less-than-stellar photos of the bird while it was on the feeder.

Painted Bunting was #312 for me in RI.  RI is my fourth state with this species as a vagrant (MD, MA, ME, and now RI).  Unfortunately I’ve missed it a couple times at feeders in NH.  Plus of course I’ve seen it in most of the states in its regular range in the south (see my statebird map below).