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Striolated Buntings are small finch-like birds. Their plumage is dimorphic, i.e. males and females are different. Male Striated Buntings have a distinct facial striation pattern, with a wide white supercilium, a thin black eye stripe, a grey stripe under that and another white moustachial stripe under the grey. Otherwise the head (frons, crown), neck, chin and upper chest are grey, streaked with darker grey. The front changes gradually downwards into a pale buff-grey colour from lower chest to belly, vent and undertail coverts. The mantle is dark grey-brown, streaked with dark-grey. The wing coverts are brown to grey-brown with black central streaks, while the flight feathers are dark-grey with broad brown outer edges. Female Striolated Buntings have a much plainer facial pattern, with grey and grey-brown hues and also the rest of their body plumage has lower colour contrasts than that of the males. Both sexes have dark-brown irises, short triangular bills with a grey upper mandible and a horn-coloured lower one, and greyish-pink leg and feet. First-winter males and all juveniles resemble females.

Striolated Buntings have previously been considered to be conspecific with the House Bunting, but have now been given full species status.

The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org .

The global distribution of the Striolated Bunting is available HERE .

There are four extant races of Striated Buntings. Altogether, apart from parts of Arabia (see below), Striated Buntings populate parts of eastern Africa (the valley of the Nile river; parts of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti) and of south-western Asia, from about Kuwait via southern Iran and Pakistan into north-western India.

In Arabia, only Striolated Buntings of nominate race "stiolata", occur. They can be found on the Sinai peninsula and in the border region of Jordan with north-western Saudi Arabia through the western half of Saudi Arabia, a few patches in Yemen and another small population in southern Oman. They are also present in the mountain ranges of northern Oman, from Musandam to near the eastern cape, but not in the narrow, densely populated coastal strip.

Race "striolata"