Tristram's Bunting

Tristram's Bunting (Emberiza tristrami) is a small forest bunting with a bold black-and-white head pattern, brown streaked back and pale underparts. Body shape, bill structure, plumage pattern and voice provide the strongest field characters. Age, sex and season may alter its appearance, so identification should combine several features and careful direct field comparisons with similar species in the same habitat (Wikipedia, general species account).

It breeds in eastern Manchuria and the Russian Far East in boreal forest, migrates to central and southern China and occurs only accidentally in East Asia and several neighbouring Asian countries. Its movements and social behaviour vary through the year, with breeding birds generally more dispersed and non-breeding birds gathering where food is concentrated. The Korean vertebrate catalogue used for this guide records the species in South Korea (Wikipedia, general species account; Wildlife of Korea occurrence records).