By Sally Siko

There’s a Painted Bunting who’s been hanging out at Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh NC that’s been delighting bird lovers with excellent views for the past couple of weeks.
While I’ve already seen several Painted Buntings this year in the eastern part of the state, it was exciting to spot one here in the Triangle!

Although these birds are certainly colorful which makes them easy to see & ID, they can be somewhat hard to find as they prefer to hunt for insects in scrubby brush and the heavy foliage of a tree line where it meets a field.
My best advice when searching for a Painted Bunting is to listen for their high pitched buzzzzed-zeeeep calls from ground level to about 20 ft in the brush.
Painted Buntings can be found along the coastline of North Carolina (and throughout the southern states) catching grasshoppers, weevils and other beetles, caterpillars, bugs, spiders, snails, wasps and flies.
During non-breeding months of early spring and late summer, they prefer to eat seeds and may be found visiting your feeders on a somewhat regular basis.

By the way, as beautiful as these birds are, their favorite seed is plain as can be lol!
Fill your feeders with white millet, (a seed that is commonly snubbed by other birds yet abundant in the most basic of mixed seed blends) & a Painted Bunting might visit your yard too.
How cool is that?!

Photos by @sally_siko of @bestlife_birding on my beloved full frame 50MP beast, the mighty @canonusa #5Ds