painted bunting sc | Best Life Birding- Birdwatching Tours

By Sally Siko

Delighted to catch up with this handsome Painted Bunting while leading a birding tour in South Carolina this week!
It was so cool to get a close up encounter with this stunning bird. Usually they tend to stay about 20 ft away so I was surprised to actually be able to stand just a few feet from the bunting while he picked at unseen insects in the tree.

Painted Buntings are a spring and summertime resident of the coastal regions of the Carolinas.
During the breeding season, they are commonly found in thickets, woodland edges, brushy areas, and open forests with dense understories. They are also known to inhabit scrublands, hedgerows, and riparian areas just behind the sand dunes which line our coast.

These beauties are also known to visit suburban backyards so you might be able to attract them to your feeders if you fill the feeders with millet seed.
Millet seed is usually eschewed by other birds. This is nice because it means that your backyard Painted Buntings won’t have to compete with the rest of the backyard birds to get a meal.
Look for these gorgeous feathered gems near the beach or in your yard from now through September in the Carolinas.

Btw, I’ve got a ton of fun group birding trips in North Carolina, South Carolina, Maine and New Jersey open for booking from now through December.
Check out the calendar below and book your next birding adventure with me today!

Photos by @sally_siko of @bestlife_birding on my mighty mirrorless monster, the @canonusa #R5

Seeing one of these colorful birds is such a treat!
Although I’ve encountered Painted Buntings many times over the years, it never gets old. I spent a few minutes photographing this handsome fellow while on a recent birding trip to SC. Though the birds are brightly hued they can be a little reclusive behavior-wise which makes them a challenge to find. The easiest way to locate one 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 in open areas along the far edge of the coastlines of the Carolinas (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, thus if you happen to live on the beaches or barrier islands of the Carolinas, Painted Buntings may become regular visitors to your backyard feeders.

By the way, as colorful as these birds are, their favorite seed is plain as can be lol!If you’d like to entice a visit from one of these feathered gems, 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.How cool is that?!

Photos by @sally_siko of @bestlife_birding on my mighty mirrorless monster, the @canonusa #R5