Buntings are the ‘other’ seed-eating songbirds. Unlike garden-visiting finches and sparrows, buntings tend to keep their distance in more ‘wild’ habitats, such as farmland, marshes and mountaintops.
They differ from finches by lacking grooves on the inside of the conical bill; buntings have a bony hump in the roof of the mouth instead, which helps to crush seeds. The cutting edges of their mandibles also curve slightly inwards. Buntings have a
