Courtesy Preview
This Introductory article that you are viewing is a courtesy preview of the full life history account of this species. The remaining articles (Distribution, Habitat, Behavior, etc.), as well as the Multimedia Galleries and Reference sections of this account are subscriber-only content, and you will need a subscription in order to view the species account in its entirety. Click on the Subscribe tab for more information.
If you are already a current subscriber, you will need to sign in with your login information to access BNA normally.
Introduction
Adult male McKay's Bunting; St. Matthew Is., AK.
McKay’s Bunting is one of the rarest and most attractive North American birds. Breeding only on two small, isolated islands in the middle of the Bering Sea, it has not been studied in any detail. During the breeding season, the male McKay’s Bunting is the whitest of North American passerines, similar to its closest relative, the Snow Bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis), but with a pure white body and black only on its wing-tips, scapulars, and tail. McKay’s Bunting probably evolved from Snow Buntings that became geographically isolated on Hall and St. Matthew islands when sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age. Due to its morphological distinctiveness and geographical isolation, McKay’s Bunting is considered to be a separate species from the Snow Bunting.
Because these two species are so closely related taxonomically, we expect that McKay’s Bunting will be found to be very similar to the Snow Bunting in most behavioral and ecological characteristics. Only those few details that have been documented explicitly for McKay’s Bunting are given in this account.
Montgomerie, Robert and Bruce Lyon. 2011. McKay's Bunting (Plectrophenax hyperboreus), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/199
