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May 2018 Bird of the Month: Indigo Bunting
- May 5, 2018
- 2 min read
This past April, our backyard had a new blue visitor. As I was getting my mid-afternoon bowl of cereal, I looked up to see a small piece of bright blue hopping around the ground underneath our seed feeder. I shouted to Patrick upstairs “Indigo Bunting! That’s the first Indigo Bunting in our yard ever!” (Or something to that extent)
The Indigo Bunting only stayed for 3 or 4 days, but we got plenty of photos of him while he was here! He seemed to visit between 3pm and 7pm throughout the last week of April. Our resident male Eastern Bluebird must have been confused and thought he was another Bluebird because he would chase the Indigo Bunting off whenever he caught sight of him! (We have “special” bluebirds!)
In celebration of our first ever Indigo Bunting visiting migrant, I decided to feature him for May’s Bird of the Month. After doing a little research, I found out some pretty interesting facts. As you see on each of the Indigo Bunting necklaces, there is a star charm at the end of each chain. Indigo Buntings are one of the few nocturnal migrants to use the North Star (a fixed point in the sky) to navigate as they travel. They learn to read the night sky as nestlings during their first summer.
Another interesting fact I learned was that the feathers of male Indigo Buntings in breeding plumage are in fact black and not blue. The way light hits the individual feather filaments makes it reflect back shades of blue (almost like how the sky appears blue to us). From what I’ve read, there’s only one living creature that makes blue pigment and it’s a type of moth.
I’ve included a couple of websites where a I found all my Indigo Bunting information at the end of this blog. I hope you enjoy the Indigo Bunting collection! Be on the lookout for these beautiful blue migrants that may show up in your own backyard!
~Megan
For more information about the Indigo Bunting, check out these sites:
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