94 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part i 



Witmer Stone (1937) mentions "a brilliant male found bathing 

 in a rain water pool in the pine grove at the Point on July 

 2, 1930 * * * ." 



T. D, Burleigh (1941) records an interesting observation in western 

 North Carolina. He says: "Appearing with unfailing regularity 

 in the fir and spruce woods (6,500 feet) in early July, this species is 

 unique in that throughout the month only adult males are seen, 

 singing each day from the upper branches of the larger trees. At 

 no time have females or young of the year been noted above an alti- 

 tude of 5,000 feet. Extreme dates for the occurrence of these wander- 

 ing males at the top of the mountain are July 5 (1931) and July 31 

 (1934)." 



Females, on the other hand, stay secretively low in the brush and 

 usually can be seen only by the exertion of determined effort. 

 W. Leon Dawson (1903) says, "she is a most prosaic creature, skulking 

 about through thickets and briar patches or fussing with the children, 

 * * * the soul of suspicion, and her protests are so emphatic that the 

 inquisitor believes himself 'hot' when he may be a dozen yards away." 

 F. M. Bailey (in Chapman, 1932) mentions the female twitching her 

 tail nervously from side to side. Males do this also. In contrast, 

 Bailey describes a male which, "day after day, used to fly to the 

 lowest limb of a high tree and sing his way up from branch to branch, 

 bursting into jubilant song when he reached the topmost bough." 



Thomas Nuttall (1832) says, "They appear to show great timidity 

 about their nest, and often readily forsake it when touched, or when 

 an egg is abstracted. * * * They will not forsake their young how- 

 ever ready they may be to relinquish their eggs; and they have been 

 known to feed their brood very faithful through the bars of a cage in 

 which they were confined." 



W. and E. Shacldeton (1947) describe "anting" by three wild 

 indigo bimtings on four consecutive days. This is of special interest 

 in connection with the failure of the painted bunting under study to 

 "ant" (L. M. Whitaker, 1957). 



Voice. — The indigo bunting is one of those species in which, ac- 

 cording to Borror (1961), different individuals have songs of many 

 different patterns with little or no overlapping between birds. In 

 fact, he suggests: "Our recordings do not contain any instance of two 

 different birds singing songs of the same pattern * * *." Nonethe- 

 less, in the words of Winsor M. Tyler (MS.), "this song has a charac- 

 ter shared by no other. There is a whole-souled concentration about 

 it. The bird, when he sings, sings just as well as he can, and I be- 

 lieve just as loud as he can — he gives himself up entirely to singing and 

 throws the notes out for all he is worth. * * * [The song] often 

 suggests a goldfinch, but a point of difference is that in the song of 



