Little Bunting Emberiza pusilla 小鵐
Category I. Uncommon from November to April with weak passage in autumn and spring.
IDENTIFICATION
Nov. 2009, Michelle and Peter Wong.
12-13.5 cm. Relatively small and compact bunting with warm brown ear coverts and lores, buff supercilium, complete pale orbital ring and relatively pointed bill with a straight culmen. A broad and distinct pale submoustachial line extends below the entire ear coverts, the hindneck is greyish and the mantle rather drab greyish-brown streaked darker, while the underparts are whitish or pale dull buff streaked narrowly blackish on the chest and flanks.
Apr. 2008, James Lam. Presumed male.
Males are generally brighter with black median crown stripes. In general, however, difficult to sex or age in the field.
VOCALISATIONS
The usual call of Little Bunting is ‘tik’ or ‘twik’, slightly harder and thinner than other buntings.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Little Buntings occupy grassland, including semi-natural grassy hillsides, abandoned paddy land and temporarily suitable landfill sites; it is also widespread in both wet and dry agricultural areas. On passage, birds tend to occur more widely, including shrubland edge and on shrubby fish pond bunds, but such areas are used primarily for resting or as refuges and feeding birds are almost always seen on the ground or in low herbaceous growth.
OCCURRENCE
Little Bunting occurs in broadly similar numbers from the first week of November to the first week of April, though minor peaks in November and the first week of April indicate some passage occurs (Figure 1). On Po Toi, where Little Bunting appears to be scarce in winter, spring passage has occurred from 14 March to an exceptionally late 26 May 2011, the latest on record in HK, with the next latest being 16 May 2012. In autumn it has occurred from 25 September. The earliest autumn record in HK occurred on 24 September 2002.
Figure 1 also illustrates the pattern of occurrence from 1958 to 1998 and indicates that numbers in spring were relatively high in that period, whereas from 1999 to 2020 they were considerably lower and little different from the winter. Spring passage was considered well marked by Carey et al. (2001), with birds widely recorded and small numbers often present on the islands and even in urban parks. Interestingly, Chalmers (1986) detailed only a small increase in numbers during March and April, suggesting perhaps that passage of birds in spring in the 1990s was for some reason more marked.
The two highest counts, both of 150 birds, were made during winter: at Tsim Bei Tsui on 15 December 1985 and at Sha Lo Tung on 21 December 1996. Since 1999 the highest count is 65 at Mai Po NR on 25 November 2009, while the highest count since 2010 is 26 at Ping Yeung on 24 December 2014. Carey et al. (2001) regarded typical winter flock sizes to be 50 or 60 birds. Thus, there would appear to have been a fall in the numbers of birds occurring in the winter, albeit not one indicated in Figure 1.
Perhaps surprisingly, there appears to be no reference to the occurrence of Little Bunting in HK prior to Herklots (1937) who stated that it was a winter visitor and considered that it was probably the commonest bunting. Whilst Herklots (1953) reiterated this view, Dove and Goodhart (1955) considered that their observation of a flock of ten birds near Mai Po on 29 March 1953 was the only post-war record. Little Bunting has been recorded in every winter since 1958-59.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
Unobtrusive but often confiding. Vocal when flushed, and sometimes when perched. May forage in loose flocks. Presumed to feed on seeds but no details.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. Breeds from northern Scandinavia east across north Siberia as far as the Bering Sea and south to northeast China and north Mongolia; winters in south China, north Indochina and the eastern Himalayan foothills (Copete 2020, Liu and Chen 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend stable.
Figure 1.
Chalmers, M. L. (1986). Annotated Checklist of the Birds of Hong Kong. Hong Kong Bird Watching Society, Hong Kong.
Copete, J. L. (2020). Little Bunting (Emberiza pusilla), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.litbun.01
Dove, R. S. and H. J. Goodhart (1955). Field observations from the Colony of Hong Kong. Ibis 97: 311-340.
Herklots, G. A. C. (1937). The birds of Hong Kong. Part XXVII. Family Fringillidae, finches and buntings. Hong Kong Naturalist 8: 65-72.
Herklots, G. A. C. (1953). Hong Kong Birds. South China Morning Post, Hong Kong.
Liu, Y. and Y. H. Chen (eds) (2020). The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China (in Chinese). Hunan Science and Technology Publication House, Changsha.
