Buntings and New World Sparrows (Emberizidae)

Cirl Bunting (Emberiza cirlus) - HBW 16, p. 517

French: Bruant zizi German: Zaunammer Spanish: Escribano Soteño

Taxonomy: Emberiza cirlus Linnaeus, 1766, southern Europe.
Recent phylogenetic analysis suggests that this species may form an independent subclade within a clade shared with E. citrinella, E. leucocephalos and E. stewarti, but with weak support under different analytic approaches. Proposed races nigrostriata (described from Ghisonaccia, in Corsica) and portucaliae (from Oporto region, in Portugal) considered to exhibit only very slight differences from birds in rest of range, and not sufficient to merit naming of geographical races. Treated as monotypic.

Distribution: Temperate areas of W & S Europe, NW Africa and Turkey: SW England and NW & C France E to Romania and coastal W & N Turkey, S to Morocco, coastal Algeria and NW Tunisia, and to Mediterranean islands of Balearics, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily and Crete.Introduced to New Zealand (South Island).