Varied Bunting

Passerina versicolor

Purple, plum, and crimson all at once, like a sunset got loose. Hides in Mexican border-country thornscrub.

Population: Not precisely quantified by IUCN/BirdLife; described qualitatively as fairly common within a restricted range, placing it on Partners in Flight's Yellow Watch List
Habitat: Desert thorn forest, thorny brush thickets, stream thickets, scrubby woodlands, and overgrown clearings, typically foraging low in dense vegetation and nesting near water
Fun fact: Breeding male Varied Buntings can look nearly plain blackish in shadow but flash a mosaic of plum, crimson, and lavender-violet in good light (with a bright red nape that browns by fall), and females lay unusually variable bluish-white to bluish-green eggs.
Range: Southern Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas (breeding barely crosses the US border) south through Mexico to Oaxaca, with disjunct populations in Chiapas, Mexico, and southeastern Guatemala
Diet: Primarily insects gleaned by foraging low in dense vegetation (twitching tail/wings to flush prey), supplemented with seeds and fruit
Size: 0.13 m
Wingspan: 0.21 m
Lifespan: 5 years

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