EASTERN RUSTIC BUNTING 1681 



Casual record. — Casual in the Pribilof Islands (St. Paul Island). 

 Egg dates. — St. Matthews Island: record, June 10. 



EMBERIZA RUSTICA LATIFASCIA Portenko 



Eastern Rustic Bunting 

 Contributed by Matti Helminen 



Habits 



The rustic bunting is widely distributed across northern Eurasia 

 from central Fenno-Scandia in the west eastward to the shores of the 

 Pacific. Though some students (Dementiev et al., 1954) consider it 

 a monotypic species, its division by Portenko (1930) into an eastern 

 and a western subspecies seems generally accepted and is recognized 

 by the most recent (1957) A.O.U. Check-List. The form that has 

 occurred within the Check-List limits in the Aleutian Islands is ap- 

 parently the eastern race, about which regrettably little seems to have 

 been written. Thus it has been necessary to prepare this report 

 largely on observations made of the western form. The Russian 

 handbooks, however, (Dementiev et al., 1954, and Portenko, 1960) 

 mention no essential differences in habits or ecology between the two 

 populations. 



The admission of the species to the American list was based origi- 

 nally on three specimens collected on Kiska Island in the western 

 Aleutians in 1911. Of these Mr. Bent (1912a) writes: "Two speci- 

 mens of this bird, at that time unknown to us, were picked up dead 

 and partially dried on Kiska Island. On June 19, at the same place, 

 Alexander Wetmore saw and collected a living specimen. I saw two 

 or three birds on Adak Island, which I thought were this species, but 

 they were exceedingly shy and I did not collect any." Olaus J. Murie 

 (1959) quotes the following version of the same incident from Alex- 

 ander Wetmore's field notes: 



On June 19, while making the rounds of my traps, I flushed a small bird that 

 flew up with a faint tsip, and dove immediately into the grass along a creek. The 

 flight was quick and with an up-and-down motion, and the bird showed two white 

 outer tail feathers. I flushed it again after some tramping, and shot it on the 

 wing, and found it a fine specimen of the bird found on the seventeenth. A 

 hundred yards farther I flushed another on a grassy slope, and missed it the first 

 time. When it got up again I shot it, but the wind carried it so that I was not able 

 to find it, though I searched carefully. No others could be found. The one taken 

 was a female, In fine plumage, but exceedingly fat. 



More recently Walter M. Weber (1956) saw a flock of five on Adak 

 Island Oct. 22, 1951, and Gabrielson and Lincoln (1959) report that 

 Karl W. Kenyon collected two specimens on Amchitka Island Oct. 20 

 and 27, 1957. As these few widely scattered records are the only 

 ones reported from the Aleutians, which have been visited and studied 



