The yellow-breasted bunting is a small migrating bird in the bunting family Emberizidae. It breeds almost everywhere in Russia and Eastern Europe. It starts off to its wintering locations as early as in August. The species prefers South-Eat Asia and Southern China where it is called the ‘rice bird’. The yellow-breasted bunting always follows an intricate itinerary: it first heads west, then south. It chooses humid roost, including river valleys, scrubby meadows, peat bogs, and forest edges.

The yellow-breasted bunting reappears at its nest quite late, around May. As soon as they get back, males make themselves comfortable on top of shrubs or strong herb stems and other low-height roosts and sometimes dare land as high as on top of a tree. Once there, they start singing as loudly as they can to demark the frontiers of their nesting areas. As in many buntings, their voice sounds more like quiet tutting and bears a passing resemblance to the sound of a jingle bell. Despite that fact that canaries are the best songbirds, they were originally taught to sing the bunting melody by male yellow-breasted buntings. That happened because yellow-breasted buntings and canaries were frequently hybridized.

Yellow-breasted buntings usually brood once a year. Starting end of July, these birds start to migrate. Throughout this period, they eat a lot of insects and maggots.

Some 15 to 20 years ago, yellow-breasted buntings were among Russia’s most numerous birds. Since 1997, the situation has undergone a dramatic change: the area of this species has curtailed, and the headcount has nosedived. This change is attributed to the unfavorable migration and wintering conditions, i.e. large-scale deforestation, wildfires, and illegal hunting. Today, yellow-breasted bunting is a member of the Red Book, Russia’s endangered-species list.