Spur and Snow Bunting

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Spur and Snow Bunting
Spurhammer (Calcarius lapponicus)

Spurhammer ( Calcarius lapponicus )

Systematics
Subclass : New-jawed birds (Neognathae)
Order : Passerines (Passeriformes)
Subordination : Songbirds (passeri)
without rank: Passerida
Superfamily : Passeroidea
Family : Spur and Snow Bunting
Scientific name
Calcariidae
Ridgway , 1901

The spur and snow bunting (Calcariidae) are a family of small songbirds . The family is divided into three genera with a total of six species, the occurrence of which extends over North America and Eurasia . They are migratory birds with breeding areas in often high northern latitudes, whose habitat shows a wide range, u. a. Grassland, steppes, tundra, mountains and also beaches. In Europe only the two eponymous species spur bunting and snow bunting are native.

description

The species in the family are medium-sized songbirds that range in size between 15 and 20 cm. The weight of the birds varies between about 20 g for the yellow-throated spur bunting and 42 g for the Bering snow bunting . The plumage shows mostly brown, gray and white areas, the irides of the birds are dark brown or black. The legs of the snow bunting of the genus Plectrophenax are dark gray or black, while these vary in color from pink to brown in the other four species.

Way of life

The diurnal birds of this family can often be seen continuously while they are pecking food from the ground. The food consists mainly of insects and seeds. Outside the breeding season, the birds can often be found in flocks. In the case of the gold-bellied spurhammer, the birds also form smaller colonies during the breeding season.

distribution and habitat

Snow Bunting in Alaska. The species breeds mainly in the arctic tundra and winters in the northern temperate zones
Yellow-throated Spurhammer as an exceptional guest in Maine . The species breeds on the North American prairie

The family has an extremely extensive range. Of the six species, two, the spur-bunting and the snow-bunting, occur in a belt that spans all of Eurasia and North America, while the other four species occur exclusively in North America. The breeding area of ​​the snow bunting extends from northern continental North America over the south coast of Greenland over northern Scandinavia through the entire northernmost Russia to the Bering Strait. The wintering area can be found in southern Canada and the northern USA and in the Eurasian part it extends from northern Great Britain via Germany, Poland, Ukraine to Mongolia and China. Exceptional guests have also been found further south, for example in Algeria and Morocco, in the Balkans and in Turkey as well as in Malta. The spur bunting has a similar distribution area.

The distribution areas of the other four species are far more restricted. The Bering Snow Bunting breeds exclusively on some islands in the Bering Sea and winters on the west coast of Alaska. Exceptionally, this species has been found in the Aleutian Islands , British Columbia , Washington and Oregon . The gold-bellied spurhammer breeds in a narrow strip on the coasts of Alaska and northern Canada and winters in an area of ​​the southeastern United States. The yellow-throated spur-bunting, on the other hand, breeds much further south in the prairie areas of the Canadian-American border region and winters in an area that extends from the southern United States to north-central Mexico. The white-throated spur-bunting has a similar distribution area, with the wintering area only reaching the northernmost areas of Mexico.

The habitat of the spur bunting and snow bunting is generally found in open landscapes such as prairies, tundras, coasts, but also in open agricultural landscapes. The snow bunting also inhabits mountainous regions.

Systematics

Traditionally, the spur and snow bunting were assigned to the family of bunting (Emberizidae). One of Per Alström et al. However, a study published in 2008 showed that the spur bunting and snow bunting form a common clade that is quite distant from the actual bunting and instead is closer to the wood warbler (Parulidae). The systematics of the clade formed from these and other closely related families, which is probably the sister group of the finches , has not yet been fully clarified at the moment (2018). The family presented here was accepted by the IOU in 2010.

With the help of a molecular clock that uses cytochrome b genes , it was shown that the Calcariidae have a common ancestor who lived about 4.2–6.2 million years ago, i.e. at the beginning of the Pliocene , perhaps shortly after the Great Grasslands formed on the North American continent in the late Miocene when the climate became drier and colder.

Genera and species

The family contains three genera: Calcarius ( spur horns ), Plectrophenax (snow bunting) and the monotypic genus Rhynchophanes , the only species of which is also called (white-throated spur bunting). Genetic analyzes using the cytochrome b genes had already shown in 2003 that the white-throated spur bunting is more closely related to the snow bunting, which justifies the position of this "spur bunting" in a separate genus. Within the genus Calcarius , the yellow-throated and gold-bellied spur bunting are sister species, i.e. closest relatives. According to this study, the spur bunting Calcarius lapponicus separated from the sister species ornatus / pictus at the beginning of the Pliocene. Despite their very different appearance, the yellow-throated and gold-bellied spur bunting ( Calcarius ornatus / pictus ) only separated from one another 1.5–2 million years ago, i.e. at the beginning of the Pleistocene . The snow bunting and the Bering snow bunting even seem to have separated only 100,000–125,000 years ago.

White-throated spurhammer ( Rhynchophanes mccownii )

literature

  • T. Yuri, D. Mindell: Molecular phylogenetic analysis of Fringillidae, "New World nine-primaried oscines (Aves: Passeriformes)". In: Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. vol. 23 (2002), pp. 229-243.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Dorothy P. Hill and Lorne K. Gould: Chestnut-collared Longspur. In: The Birds of North America Online. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, accessed August 2, 2013 .
  2. ^ A b Robert Montgomery and Bruce Lyon: McKay's Bunting. In: The Birds of North America Online. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, accessed August 2, 2013 .
  3. ↑ a b David J. Hussell and Robert Montgomerie: Lapland Longspur. In: The Birds of North America Online. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, accessed August 2, 2013 .
  4. ^ A b c F. Gill F and D. Donsker: Tanagers, Cardinals and allies. (No longer available online.) In: IOC World Bird List: Version 3.4. International Ornithologists' Union, June 30, 2013, archived from the original on September 28, 2013 ; Retrieved August 2, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / worldbirdnames.org
  5. ↑ a b Plectrophenax nivalis (Snow Bunting). In: IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: 2013.1. International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 2013, accessed August 5, 2013 .
  6. ^ Robert Montgomerie and Bruce Lyon: Snow Bunting. In: The Birds of North America Online. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, accessed August 2, 2013 .
  7. ↑ Plectrophenax hyperboreus. In: IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, accessed August 5, 2013 .
  8. ↑ James V. Briskie,: Smith's Longspur. In: The Birds of North America Online. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, accessed August 5, 2013 .
  9. ↑ Kimberley A. With: McCown's Longspur. In: The Birds of North America Online. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, accessed August 5, 2013 .
  10. ^ Kenn Kaufman: Kaufman Field Guide to Advanced Birding: Understanding what You See and Hear . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, ISBN 0-547-24832-6 , pp. 433 ( google.com ).
  11. ^ Jason A. Mobley: Birds of the World . Marshall Cavendish, 2008, ISBN 0-7614-7775-6 , pp. 580-81 ( google.com ).
  12. ↑ P. Alström, U. Olsson, F. Lei, HT Wang, W. Gao and P. Sundberg: Phylogeny and classification of the Old World Emberizini (Aves, Passeriformes) . In: Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution . tape 47 , no. 3 , 2008, p. 960-73 , doi : 10.1016 / j.ympev.2007.12.007 , PMID 18411062 .
  13. ↑ a b John Klicka, Robert M. Zink and K. Winke: Longspurs and snow buntings: phylogeny and biogeography of a high-latitude clade ( Calcarius ) . In: Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution . tape 26 , no. 2 , 2003, p. 165-75 , doi : 10.1016 / S1055-7903 (02) 00360-3 , PMID 12565028 .

Web links

Commons : Calcariidae  - Collection of images, videos and audio files