Indigo Bunting Facts and Photography- Canadian Widlife Education Series

The Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea) is a small finch-like song bird. During the breeding season the male is a magnificent brilliant blue all over. The female is brown and may have some blue tinted feathers on her tail or wings. At non-breeding times the male has brown plumage with a few blue edging feathers. Both sexes have a length of a mere 5 inches with a wingspan of 7-9 inches.

Using the stars to guide them, the Indigo Bunting typically migrates at night. A male’s song is unique to the area in which he resides; it is not uncommon for males only yards apart to have different songs. Indigo Buntings inhabit open woodlands with brush and tall weeds along woods, roads, open deciduous forests and unused mature fields. During the winter they reside in citrus orchards and weedy fields and farmland. Their diet consists of seeds, insects, spiders, buds and berries. During the winter the Indigo Bunting joins flocks to eat.

Adults return to their same breeding site each year. Nests are an open bowl shape with soft leaves, grasses, stems and strips of bark. The bark is held in place by spider webs, and the nest is lined with hair and fine grass. Nests are found in shrubs and herbaceous plants near the ground. The female lays 1-4 white eggs. Chicks are helpless at birth with few down feathers for protection and warmth.

This image of the Indigo Bunting was photographed by Shelley Myke was published by the University of Guelph in 2011.

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