Lark Bunting - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The Lark Bunting is monotypic, the only member of the genus Calamospiza, and is not closely related to any other genera. It was first described by J. K. Townsend in 1837, from a specimen collected on a trip he took with Thomas Nuttall, under the name Fringilla bicolor. This is a preoccupied name, so Leonhard Hess Stejneger renamed the species in 1885 Calamospiza melanocorys. By then, the Lark Bunting had already been given its own genus, the one it is still placed in, by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1838.