The French call painted buntings \u2014 a bird the size of a house finch flitting through the shrubs on our southernmost shores \u2014 \u201cnonpareil,\u201d or \u201cwithout equal.\u201d They\u2019re right. Each adult male painted bunting carries a rainbow splattered across his body: red underneath with a lime-green back, bluish-purple head, red eye ring. They seem too dressed up for North Carolina\u2019s coastal scrubland, wearing their Sunday best to a pig pickin\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re the most colorful bird in the United States,\u201d says Brian O\u2019Shea, assistant curator and collection manager of ornithology at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. \u201cThe texture of their feathers impresses me. The brighter bird colors have feathers with a glossy, iridescent texture, and painted buntings are covered in that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Eleanor Spicer Rice highlights these Winged Rainbows in the latest issue of Our State Magazine \u2026<\/p>\n
ARTICLE<\/a> | VIDEO<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":114001,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/113998"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/113998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}