Painted Bunting is the species we feature on the cover of our November-December issue, which went on sale at Barnes & Noble and other newsstands on November 8.
In our cover story, ecologist and science journalist Cheryl Lyn Dybas describes birders she encountered on the boardwalk at the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary near Naples, Florida, where three male Painted Buntings were gathered at a feeder. The birdwatchers inched closer to the birds as Cheryl looked on. “They’re so beautiful,” one birder whispered, “they don’t even look real.”
Indeed, they are beautiful, as the photo above makes clear. gman79 photographed the wide-eyed bunting on Jekyll Island, Georgia, on May 16, 2015.
Originally Published
