Species Name: Indigo bunting (Passerina cyanea).

Length: 12-13 cm (5-5 in).

Summary: A brilliantly blue bird of old fields and roadsides, the Indigo Bunting prefers abandoned land to urban areas, intensely farmed areas, or deep forests.

Description:

• Wingspan: 19-22 cm (7-9 in)
• Weight: 12-18 g (0.42-0.64 ounces)
• Small songbird.
• Short, thick bill.
• Male brilliant dark blue all over.
• Female dull brown.
• Eyes dark brown.
• Legs blue-gray to blackish.

Range: Common in woodland clearings and borders. Breeds from southern Manitoba to Maine, southward to northern Florida and eastern Texas, and westward to southern Nevada. Winters from southern Florida and central Mexico southward through Caribbean and Central America to northern South America.

Behavior: Gleans insects off of branches. Feeds in flocks in winter.

Cool Facts:

• The Indigo Bunting migrates at night, using the stars for guidance. It learns its orientation to the night sky from its experience as a young bird observing the stars.
• Experienced adult Indigo Buntings can return to their previous breeding sites when held captive during the winter and released far from their normal wintering area.
• The sequences of notes in Indigo Bunting songs are unique to local neighborhoods.
• Males a few hundred meters apart generally have different songs.
• Males on neighboring territories often have the same or nearly identical songs.
• Indigo and Lazuli buntings defend territories against each other in the western Great Plains where they occur together, share songs, and sometimes interbreed.

Similar Species:

• Eastern Bluebird has reddish chest and white belly.
• Blue Grosbeak larger, with much thicker bill and obvious rufous wingbars.
• Female Lazuli Bunting similar, but has more uniform pinkish buff breast and throat, and more conspicuous wingbars.
• Female Varied Bunting more uniformly brown, without trace of wingbars, and a slightly more stubby bill.

Sound: Song a musical series of warbling notes, each phrase given in twos. Call a sharp, thin "spit." Flight call a high buzz.

Food: Small insects, spiders, seeds, buds, and berries.

Nesting: Open cup of soft leaves, coarse grasses, stems, and strips of bark, held in place with spider web, lined with fine grasses or deer hair. Placed in shrub or herbaceous plant close to ground.

References: Payne, R. B. 1992. Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea). In The Birds of North America, No. 4 (A. Poole, Peter Stettenheim, and F. Gill, Eds.). Philadelphia: The Academy of Natural Sciences; Washington, DC; The American Ornithologists' Union.

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