While watching the panoply of nesting birds at HAS's Smith Oaks Rookery in High Island, TX, we heard someone call, "Look at that blue bird." Not 15' below our viewing platform there it was, an male Blue Grosbeak, chomping down on grass seeds.
The bird stayed for at least 20 minutes, sometimes obscured by the blowing grass leaves, but then suddenly providing an open view. Note the bicolored bill and reddish wing bars, easily separating it from another Passerina cousin, the Indigo Bunting.
The Blue Grosbeak is a widespread breeder across the southern U.S, as well as Mexico. Map from Cornell Lab of Ornithology:
As I understand it, terms like "bunting" and "grosbeak" refer to a variety of seed-eating songbirds, and are descriptive rather that taxonomic terms. In other words all buntings are not in the same family or genus. In fact the Blue Grosbeak is the only "grosbeak" in genus Passerina, while the other six species there are called "buntings".To make matters more confusing, most birds named "bunting" are in the family Emberizidae, which includes Old World and New World sparrows, among which are 39 bunting species in the genus Emberiza. Other species with the common name of Grosbeak are in several different genera in the family Cardinaidae, such as Saltator, Pheucticus, etc.
Maybe questionable, but see Cardinalidae of North America. I wondered about the accuracy of this site since it lists "Len Blumin" as a source of information on the genus Passerina! They used text I wrote in 2008 for a Flickr posting a grainy photo of the Varied Bunting.
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