Bird Bio: Indigo Bunting
The Indigo Bunting is one of the few species that can make our beloved Eastern Bluebird appear dull. Male Indigo Buntings fill our meadows and forest edges with their bright, almost cheerful song from April into early summer. Once you learn to identify their song, you’ll be shocked at just how common and wide-spread these stunning members of the Bunting family can be. Click here for a listen.
Male Indigo Bunting
Photo by Eli Haislip
Typically arriving in early to mid April, these neotropical migrants waste no time with males beginning to sing to establish their territories. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, young male Indigo Buntings will learn their songs from neighboring males. Indigo Buntings in different areas will have slight variations in song, while males that are in the same area, or “song neighborhood,” will have a nearly identical call.
Females alone construct the nests, building them low to the ground in dense vegetation. Nests consist of a woven cup of grasses, held together with spider silk with softer natural materials lining the interior of the cup. Eggs are white and plain, with some occasional brown spots. Incubation takes 11-14 days, while the nestling phase lasts as little as 8-14 days before the young fledge.
Indigo Buntings are neotropical migrants, meaning they will spend the winter in Central and South America, as far south as Colombia. A particularly interesting fact about Indigo Buntings is that they, like many other migratory birds, migrate at night. Research conducted during the 1960s using captive birds in planetariums showed that the birds are able to use the stars, in conjunction with their internal clocks, to aid in staying on course while migrating at night. (Yet another example of the term “bird brain” being laughably inaccurate, but I digress.) For those of you wanting to learn more about this in more scholarly terms than I am capable of, click here for an excellent article from Smithsonian covering Emlen’s study in thorough detail.
If all this has you wanting to see one of these dazzling birds, I have a few places I can recommend. Gossett Tract, the Harpeth River Greenway behind Ensworth, Bell’s Bend, and Hidden Lake State Park are some of the best places to spot them. Look for them perching on open tree limbs at the edge of fields and meadows, singing merrily.
We recommend having binoculars with you, as aside from the Eastern Bluebird, another blue bird shares this same habitat with the Buntings that from a distance looks similar. Blue Grosbeaks can be mistaken for Indigo Buntings, although a quick look through binoculars and the differences become obvious. Blue Grosbeaks are larger, with a chunkier bill, and brown on the wings. (An aside, take $25 off Nikon Monarch M5s and M7s for Father’s Day!) Let us know at the shop if you succeed in finding either of these blue beauties on your next hike, and happy birding!
