Elegant Bunting
Elegant Bunting (Emberiza elegans) is also known as Yellow-throated Bunting. There are two disjunct populations; nominate subspecies elegans occurs in the far north of China, Korea and adjacent parts of Russia. Subspecies elegantula lives much further south in the mountains of Central China. To confuse matters, the northern birds migrate south to the general area where the largely resident southern birds breed. So you have to look closely to see which subspecies they are in Central China. This male, photographed in Central China in winter, is of the northern elegans population. It is identifiable as such by the pale grey collar which is unstreaked. It also had a small black crescent on its breast (not visible here) whereas elegantula has a much larger crescent. There are a handful of records from Europe but such a handsome bird was popular in the cagebird trade, so that is the likely source of birds seen in France, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Germany. This relatively short-distance migrant is unlikely to stray thousands of miles off course to Europe.
Elegant Bunting
Elegant Bunting (Emberiza elegans) is also known as Yellow-throated Bunting. There are two disjunct populations; nominate subspecies elegans occurs in the far north of China, Korea and adjacent parts of Russia. Subspecies elegantula lives much further south in the mountains of Central China. To confuse matters, the northern birds migrate south to the general area where the largely resident southern birds breed. So you have to look closely to see which subspecies they are in Central China. This male, photographed in Central China in winter, is of the northern elegans population. It is identifiable as such by the pale grey collar which is unstreaked. It also had a small black crescent on its breast (not visible here) whereas elegantula has a much larger crescent. There are a handful of records from Europe but such a handsome bird was popular in the cagebird trade, so that is the likely source of birds seen in France, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Germany. This relatively short-distance migrant is unlikely to stray thousands of miles off course to Europe.