Yellow-breasted Bunting

Yellow-breasted Bunting (Emberiza aureola) is a small bunting whose breeding male has brilliant yellow underparts, a dark head, chestnut breast band and white wing patch. 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 across the boreal and eastern Palearctic, feeds on seeds and insects in open wet meadows and scrub and undertakes a long migration to southern and Southeast Asia. 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).