On 3 September Paul Lehman reported two megas from Gambell, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska.
Below Troutman Lake, sometimes perched and photographed, was an ABA Code-5 Pallas’s Bunting (Emberiza pallasi). The other species was an ABA Code-4 Dusky Warbler (Phylloscopus fuscatus) seen poorly in the far boneyard.
There are only four previous records (five reports) of Pallas’s Bunting from the ABA Area including three from Gambell, one on 28 May 1973, one from 24-26 September 2006, and one 15 September 2007 (ABA Checklist, Seventh Edition, Pranty et al.).
It is a widespread and common to abundant species occurring in arctic and mountain tundra and steppe. In winter, it is usually found in reedbeds (formerly called Pallas’s Reed Bunting) and shrubs near lakes and rivers and adjacent grassy fields, rice fields, and arable lands (Sparrows and Buntings, A Guide to the Sparrows and Buntings of North America and the World, Byers et al.). They breed primarily in northern Siberia from the Kara and Seda rivers east to the Chuckchi Peninsula and northern Kamchatka, Russian Far East, plus a disjunct population is located in southern Siberia and northern Mongolia. Pallas’s Buntings winter primarily in eastern China, South Korea, extreme southeastern Russian Far East, and Kyushu, Japan (ABA Checklist, Seventh Edition).
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