The Yellow - throated Bunting ( Emberiza elegans) , also known as the Yellow- beaked Bunting , is a medium-sized bunting, about 15 cm in length . Males and females are similar in appearance but different in color, but both sexes possess a tuft of feathers that forms a crest on their heads, a distinctive feature not found in many other buntings.
The male of this species has a black forehead, crest, nape, cheeks, and throat. The supercilium is divided into three sections: a small section of pure white supercilium near the eye, which then abruptly turns bright yellow, continuing down to the back of the head to form a yellow band around the back of the head; the third section of supercilium is white and curves downwards. The jaw is yellow, the upper throat is pure white, and the lower throat is black. The shoulders, back, rump, and upper tail coverts are chestnut, with black longitudinal stripes on the upper back and white tips on the feathers. The tail feathers are black, with the two central tail feathers being grayish, and the outer armor of the two outer tail feathers being white, a characteristic shared by all buntings. The wing coverts are the same color as the back, the median coverts are white, the greater coverts are brown with white tips, and the flight feathers are brown. The underparts from the throat down are yellowish-white as the base color, with large chestnut longitudinal stripes on the upper breast and flanks.
The female 's crest is less prominent than the male's. The black areas on the male's head and face are a less distinct brown in the female. The yellow on the eyebrow stripe and jaw is also less bright than in the male. The female lacks a black ruff around her lower throat, but the rest of her body is essentially the same as the male's. The iris is chestnut brown; the upper beak is nearly black, and the lower beak is lighter; the legs are light grayish-brown.
The Yellow-throated Bunting is found in a vast area of China, from the northeast to the eastern coast of Guangdong. The distribution of the northeastern subspecies extends westward along a line from Inner Mongolia , Hebei , Henan , Hunan , and Jiangxi to eastern Guangdong. The southwestern subspecies is found in a vast area centered on the Sichuan Basin and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Its distribution range extends southward to northern Myanmar in winter and northward to Shaanxi in summer . The nominate subspecies is found in central Taiwan, the Ryukyu Islands, and other areas.
