Dutch Birding volume 28 (2006) no 5

Grey-necked Bunting at Castricum in October 2004

On 16 October 2004, a Grey-necked Bunting Emberiza buchanani landed on the grounds of the bird ringing station at Castricum, Noord-Holland, the Netherlands, lured by a call of Yellowhammer E citrinella played near the clap nets. It was trapped, ringed and measured. In the next hour, descriptions, videos and photographs were taken, and the bird was sound-recorded at release. From its plumage, it was identified as a first-year male, separable from males of Ortolan Bunting E hortulana and Cretzschmar's Bunting E caesia of similar age by the relatively long tail, relatively long and slender-based all-pink bill, black-and-rufous pattern on the tertials (without the so-called 'Emberiza pattern' with sharply-cornered hook), black-and-white pattern of the outermost tail-feather (no black of outer web invading white wedge on inner web), presence of pink feather-centres on throat and breast (no yellow on throat, no grey on breast), and call. Photographs were compared with specimens from the breeding grounds in the collections of the zoological museums of Amsterdam and Leiden (Netherlands), Berlin (Germany), and Tring (England) and with descriptions made in the museum of Bonn (Germany), proving that the bird perfectly matched the subspecies E b neobscura, breeding from the Mugodzhary Plateau in western Kazakhstan east to Mongolia. This subspecies is characterized by predominantly greyish olive-brown upperparts patterned with narrow but fairly pronounced black streaking on lower mantle and scapulars, lacking the rufous borders along the less clearly defined dark shaft-streaks on mantle and scapulars shown by the subspecies E b cerrutii from eastern Turkey, Transcaucasia, western and northern Iran, and south-western Turkmenistan. The Castricum bird was the fifth and westernmost record for Europe, earlier observations being restricted to two birds recorded at Orenburg (south-eastern European Russia) before 1900 and more recent ones at Snake Island (Ostrov Zmeinyy), Black Sea, Ukraine, on 25 May 1983 and near Ufa, western Urals, Bashkortostan, Russia, on 15 June 2003. The species may breed in the Orenburg and Ufa regions, as these are close to the known breeding area on the Mugodzhary Plateau.

C S (Kees) Roselaar, Zoölogisch Museum, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Postbus 94766, 1090 GT Amsterdam, Nederland
(roselaarscience.uva.nl)
Vrs Castricum, p/a Bergstraat 31, 1931 EN Egmond aan Zee, Nederland
(vinkenbaanvwgcastricum.nl)