Grey-necked Bunting

The grey-necked bunting, sometimes called the grey-hooded bunting, has a long pink bill and is greyish above. The male has a distinctive white eye ring that stands out against the grey hood, with the chin and throat whitish-pink bordered by grey malar stripes and pinkish-brown underparts; the female is duller, though the moustachial stripe can appear more noticeable. It breeds along a wide range from the Caspian Sea to the Altai Mountains in Central Asia and winters in parts of southern Asia; birds that breed in the Baluchistan region winter in India, moving through Gujarat in September and returning in March (Wikipedia, general species account).

In winter it makes a short, subdued click, while the song is a metallic jingle of swee-swee notes ending with a dzwe-ee-dul. It nests on the ground under overhanging vegetation, the nest lined with grass and hair. SoIB 2023 rates it a Moderate conservation priority, a winter migrant of grassland and scrub that eats plants and seeds, with a Large range of about 393,000 km² and a rapid long-term decline of about 81% (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).