Meadow Bunting

Meadow Bunting (Emberiza cioides) is an East Asian bunting whose male has a chestnut-striped head, black throat, warm brown back and pale underparts. Body shape, bill structure, plumage pattern and voice provide the strongest field characters. Age, sex and season may alter its appearance, so identification should combine several features and careful direct field comparisons with similar species in the same habitat (Wikipedia, general species account).

It lives in open scrub, grassland and farmland, feeding mainly on seeds outside breeding and adding insects in summer, singing from low exposed perches and nesting near the ground. Its movements and social behaviour vary through the year, with breeding birds generally more dispersed and non-breeding birds gathering where food is concentrated. Japanese records place it within the country's documented avifauna as a resident, migrant or visitor (Wikipedia, general species account; Wildlife of Japan occurrence records).