Emberiza leucocephalos
Silhouette: L. Shyamal · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~30% in a week ~60%
The pine bunting (Emberiza leucocephalos) is a passerine bird in the bunting family Emberizidae, a group most modern authors now separate from the finches, Fringillidae. It lives in Eurosiberia east of the Urals. The genus name Emberiza is from Old German Embritz, a bunting. The specific leucocephalos is from Ancient Greek leukos, "whites", and kephalos, "headed".
The pine bunting is a robust 16–17.5-centimetre bird, with a thick seed-eater's bill. The male has a white crown and cheeks, and a chestnut forehead and throat, and a heavily streaked brown back. The female is much duller and is more streaked on its undersides. Non-breeding plumage is like that of a yellowhammer, but with all the yellow replaced by white. Its song and calls are like those of the yellowhammer.
The pine bunting breeds across much of temperate Asia, migrating south to central Asia, north India and southern China in winter. It is common in all sorts of open land with some scrub or trees, including cultivation, but has a greater preference for open forest (usually pines) than the closely related yellowhammer. It is a rare vagrant to western... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Camargue | 🇫🇷 France |
More parks will be added in future updates.
| # | City | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Novosibirsk | 🇷🇺 Russia | |
| 2 | Ulaanbaatar | 🇲🇳 Mongolia | |
| 3 | Ramallah | 🇵🇸 Palestine | |
| 4 | Beijing | 🇨🇳 China |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Pine Bunting sighting in Camargue on a given day, based on 7 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 84th most-seen of the 212 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 30%, and over a week to about 60%, if each day is a fresh chance.
January
In that month about 50% of wildlife watchers report a Pine Bunting in Camargue on a given day, against under 5% in February to December, the lowest months.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Pine Bunting sightings with a recorded time, and about 8 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Camargue, in our data
Camargue is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Pine Bunting sightings: about 10% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
Same genus: Emberiza
The closest relatives of the Pine Bunting that you can see in Camargue (genus Emberiza, Old World Buntings) are Corn Bunting (about 20%) and Reed Bunting (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Pine Bunting is recorded against all the birds logged in Camargue (7 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
