Ortolan bunting

Name and taxonomy

Carl Linnaeus described the ortolan bunting in 1758, in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae. The name he gave it, Emberiza hortulana, is still the name in use. The species is monotypic, so no subspecies are recognised anywhere in its wide range. Emberiza comes from Embritz, an Alemannic German word for a bunting.

The species name hortulana is the Italian name for the bird, ortolana. English took ortolan from the Middle French hortolan, which meant a gardener. Both names probably point at one idea: a bird of gardens and cultivated ground. Ortolan and ortolan bunting mean the same species, and the shorter form is older in English.

Evolution and relatives

The ortolan sits in Emberiza, the only genus in the family Emberizidae. That genus holds 44 species of Old World bunting, all of them seed eaters with short conical bills. Linnaeus set the genus up in 1758 and made the yellowhammer its type species. Modern work separates these buntings from the true finches, which sit in the family Fringillidae.

A molecular study published in 2008 found the closest relative of the ortolan. It is Cretzschmar's bunting, Emberiza caesia, a bird of the eastern Mediterranean. Genetic work in 2021 traced the whole genus back to the New World. The ancestors crossed to eastern Asia over the Bering Strait late in the Miocene, then split into four groups. Like other buntings, the ortolan probably kept the stout seed-cracking bill of that ancestor.

Appearance

The ortolan bunting is 16 to 17 centimetres long and spans 23 to 29 cm across the wings. AnAge gives an adult weight of 19.9 grams and a body mass of 27 g. In shape and in habits the bird closely resembles the yellowhammer. It lacks the strong colour of that relative, and the difference shows first on the head. A yellowhammer wears bright yellow there, while the ortolan wears greenish-grey.

The body is brown and streaked, like most ground-feeding buntings. Like other members of the genus, it carries a short conical bill built to crack seed. The plain plumage probably works as camouflage against bare soil and stubble. Birdwatchers in Britain probably look for the grey head rather than for any bright mark.

Habitat and range

The ortolan breeds across most of Europe and into West Asia. The range runs from Scandinavia, patchily, south to the Iberian Peninsula. Eastward it reaches through the Baltic countries, western and central Russia and northern Kazakhstan. The far edge takes in northern Xinjiang in China and much of Mongolia. Some birds nest north of the Arctic Circle, and others breed on the coast of Algeria.

The bird likes cornfields and the rough ground beside them. Open hills with scattered trees appear to suit it in the south of the range. In winter the whole population moves to Africa, with some birds around the Mediterranean and in Arabia. GBIF holds records from 105 countries, although that count includes strays and old museum material. A photograph taken at Kenjar on the coast of Karnataka in 2018 was called the first Indian record.

Britain and Ireland see the ortolan only as a scarce visitor. Most British records fall in autumn, and a few come in spring. Those records have grown rarer as the European population has fallen.

Diet and feeding

Seeds make up the natural diet of the ortolan bunting. The short deep bill splits a husk, as with every other bunting. Grain from farmland is easy food, and the bird feeds in and around cornfields. Beetles and other insects come into the diet when there are chicks to feed. Like most seed-eating songbirds, the ortolan makes that switch because a growing chick needs protein.

The yellowhammer shows what such a chick diet holds. Its young take grasshoppers, flies, beetles, spiders, snails, caterpillars, earthworms and springtails. The ortolan probably works through a similar list where it nests. Trappers exploited the seed habit by feeding caged birds on millet until they doubled in bulk.

Like other buntings, the ortolan takes most of its seed from the ground or from a standing crop. Weed seed probably matters as much as grain, because a field edge carries both. The captive diet of pure millet suggests how completely the bird can live on seed.

Behaviour and social life

The ortolan spends the breeding season on the ground and in low cover. It places its nest on the ground or very close to it. The bird is a long-distance migrant and leaves Europe for Africa each autumn. Like most small songbirds, the ortolan probably travels at night and comes down at dawn. Birds from Finland and the Baltic pass through south-western France on the way south.

The longest recorded life is 6.8 years, which is six years and ten months. That bird was found dead in Switzerland. Most small buntings probably live a fraction of that time, so the figure is a ceiling. Like other buntings, males hold a territory in the breeding season and sing from a perch to keep it.

Communication and senses

The song of a male ortolan sounds much like the song of a yellowhammer. A yellowhammer starts on short notes, builds the volume, and closes on one or two drawn-out notes. Male yellowhammers learn local dialects, and each male keeps a personal set of variants. The ortolan probably carries dialects of the same kind across its wide range.

Song probably does two jobs at once: it warns off rival males and advertises for a female. Trappers once imitated calls to draw birds in, which suggests how strongly small birds answer sound. Sight probably matters most for finding seed on bare ground. Like other night migrants, the ortolan probably uses the stars and the earth's magnetic field to steer.

Reproduction and life cycle

The ortolan nests on or near the ground, hidden in low plants. Wikidata records a typical clutch of about four or five eggs. A yellowhammer builds its cup from leaves, dry grass and stalks, and it measures 11.5 to 13 centimetres across. The ortolan nest is likely to be a structure of the same kind and size.

In the yellowhammer the female sits for 12 to 14 days and the chicks fly 11 to 13 days after hatching. That relative fits two or three broods into a summer. An ortolan has a shorter northern summer and may manage fewer. Both parents probably bring insects to the chicks, which grow fast on that food. Young birds are likely to be ready to migrate within weeks of leaving the nest.

Predators and threats

A nest on the ground is probably easy for a hunting mammal or a crow to find. German studies of the yellowhammer put predation behind more than 60% of failed nests. Rodents and crows did most of that damage. Sparrowhawks, goshawks and lesser spotted eagles take adult yellowhammers, and they probably take ortolans too.

The largest single threat to the ortolan came from people rather than from predators. Trappers set nets on the autumn passage through south-western France for generations. Modern farming has probably also taken away weedy stubble and the insects that go with it. Northern birds may carry a double cost, because they breed in the north and pass through the trapping ground.

A netted bird has no defence at all, which may be why the trade took so many so easily. French volunteers watched the trapping grounds for years after the ban and saw little change. The local representative of the government repeated the promise to enforce the European rule in 2016.

Population and conservation

The IUCN Red List rated the ortolan bunting as Least Concern as of 2018. A study published in 2019 questioned that view. It combined stable isotopes, archival light geolocators and population genetics, and it found the species in decline. BirdLife International tracks a continuing fall in the number of mature birds.

National lists appear to tell a harder story than the global one. Norway, Finland and Switzerland all list the ortolan as Critically Endangered. The bird is Endangered in France, and Vulnerable in Portugal and in Israel. It counts as regionally extinct in Wallonia in Belgium and in two French regions. The French League for the Protection of Birds measured a fall of 30% in France between 1997 and 2007.

Naturalists have logged 5919 ortolan observations on iNaturalist. That seems a small total for a bird with such a wide range.

Relationship with humans

No other small European bird appears to have been eaten with so much ceremony. Trappers caught ortolans in nets during the autumn flight to Africa. The birds went into covered cages and were force-fed grain, usually millet. Once a bird had doubled in bulk it was held over Armagnac and drowned in the brandy. Cooks then plucked it, salted and peppered it, and cooked it in its own fat for seven minutes.

The diner put the bird into the mouth feet first and ate it whole, bones and all. Cyprus once ran an export trade in ortolans pickled in spices and vinegar. Each cask held 300 to 400 birds, and 400 to 500 casks left the island a year in the early twentieth century. France banned the hunt in 1999, and the European Union bans killing, capture and sale across every member state. Enforcement stayed weak. Poachers still took as many as 50,000 birds a year, against a maximum fine of 6,000 euros set in 2007.

In culture and myth

The ortolan appears in French gastronomic tradition more than in any body of folklore. Diners covered the head and face with a large napkin while they ate. A priest who was a friend of Brillat-Savarin is credited with starting the practice. Some say the cloth holds in the smell, and the Daily Telegraph reported that it hides the shame of the act from God. Others say it only hides a diner spitting out bones.

Edgar Allan Poe put the bird in his story The Duc de L'Omelette in 1832, where the Duke dies while eating one. The Three Emperors Dinner of 1867 served ortolans on toast among its 16 courses. The 1958 film Gigi shows an aunt teaching the girl how to eat them. The last New Year's Eve meal of President Francois Mitterrand in 1995 included the bird. The television series Succession used a deep-fried ortolan and its napkin as a mark of greed.