Earlier this month, I posted a few photos of a female Painted Bunting at the bird feeder, and today I spotted the colorful male as I was hiking Leon M. Weekes Preserve.

This wintering Painted Bunting has been down here for some time, but this is the first time I’ve been able to photograph this flying rainbow–the most colorful of our songbirds.

For some better, up-close photos of the buntings, see this post.

For some reason, I never seem to hear the Painted Bunting call, or at least not from a close enough distance.

From an earlier post I wrote from South Carolina, July 2, 2011: “The eastern coast subspecies of the Male Painted Bunting, or “flying rainbow” as my mom affectionately calls this small songbird, winters in Florida and breeds in Georgia and South Carolina. Overall, the Painted Bunting has shown a significant decline across its entire range during the past 35 years. The exact causes for Painted Bunting’s decline are not known, but they are believed to include habitat loss, cowbird parasitism, and trapping for the pet trade (the central United-States sub species) on its wintering grounds. Conservation efforts are underway to try to protect the Bunting’s habitats before this species’ population declines more.”