Painted Bunting

© Pete Parker

Published: August 9, 2010

Pete Parker, a nature photographer and pomegranate farmer from west Texas, captured this photo of a male Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris) on the Texas coast.

“When I moved to Texas 14 years ago, I was already a very serious photographer,” Pete says. “When I discovered we had Painted Buntings in very close proximity to my residence, I started working to observe the life of this secretive bird. I have witnessed aerial combat of males in overlapping territories, and I’ve discovered that Painted Buntings in the coastal nesting areas claim on the order of about 6-8 acres while inland birds claim much larger tracts of land, up to 30 acres. This could be due to the scarcity of land on the coast and competition for that land by other birds.”

He made the photo above with a Canon 5D and a 600mm f/4 L IS lens with a 1.4x teleconverter and a flash.

In 2006, our readers voted the Painted Bunting No. 2 on their list of the 20 birds they want to see most.

See 10 more birds photographed in Texas that we’ve featured in Photo of the Week:

- Canyon Wren
- Crested Caracara
- Golden-cheeked Warbler
- Green Jay
- Orange-crowned Warbler
- Royal Terns
- Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
- Summer Tanager
- Tennessee Warbler
- Wilson’s Snipe

---

A picture you take could win you a Zeiss Victory 8x42 T* FL binocular! (Read about Zeiss Birding and Nature.) We choose a new photo every Monday. And every other month, we ask a professional bird photographer whose work we’ve published in the magazine to pick the best Photo of the Week over the previous two months. We’ll give the winner great Zeiss gear and a free one-year subscription to Birder’s World. Plus, we’ll publish his or her photo in the magazine! Send us your photo today!

Rules
Winners
Species List

Join us on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr!