72 



BIRDS OF AMERICA 



stop entirely ; then the Indigo Bunting begins to 

 take an interest in his voice. The summer heat 

 makes the Robin open his bill in the shadow to 

 gasp for breath. The Bobolink is off for the 

 marshes to keep cool. The Song Sparrow hides 

 in the bushes till the extreme heat of the day is 

 over. But the Indigo Bird is never daunted by 

 the heat of July and August days. Many and 

 many a highway can be traversed in the heat of 

 the day without hearing one bird utter even a 

 short note, except the Indigo Bird. He sings 

 from the top of a bush or a short tree or a tele- 

 phone pole or on the very topmost tiny twig of 

 the very tallest tree in the neighborhood and with 

 the greatest glee " he loudly sings his roundelay 

 of love." The persistence, almost by the hour, of 

 the sweet simple song is one of the surprises of 

 the bird. So far up against the blue he sometimes 

 is that not only color is lost but even his form 

 is often too vague to be identified. The baking 

 hot Sim even quiets many of the insects, yet 

 there come the notes of the Indigo Bunting 

 tumbling down from far up in the sky. He 

 certainly has the field all to himself. 



]\Irs. Bailey gives an interesting account of an 

 Indigo Bird. " I well remember watching one 

 Indigo Bird, who, 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. I 

 watched him climb as high into the air as he 

 could, when against a background of blue sky 

 and rolling white clouds, the blessed little song- 

 ster broke out into the blithest round that ever 

 bubbled up from a glad heart." 



Follow the life of the bird as long as he 

 remains in our northern clime, and very many 

 surprising things will be found out about him. 

 Instead of being one of the many species of the 

 large Sparrow family, it would seem that he 

 might be given a scientific family name all to 

 himself. L. Nelson Nichols. 



The Indigo Bird is one of our most valuable 

 species and should be given rigid protection. His 

 food consists mainly of seeds and berries with a 

 goodly number of insects. Among the insects 

 are found caterpillars, click-beetles, snout-beetles, 

 chafers, bugs of various kinds, and canker 

 worms. In an orchard that was infested with 

 canker worms tlie Indigo Bird was foimd eating 

 more than its usual amount of these pests, some 

 stomachs showing as much as 78 per cent, of 

 canker worms. 



LAZULI BUNTING 

 Passerina amoena (Say) 



A. O. U. Number 599 



Other Name. — Lazuli Painted Bunting. 



General Description. — Length, 6 inches. Male, blue 

 above and tawny and white below; female, brown and 

 blue above and bufify below. Bill, small : wings, long 

 and pointed : tail, about -I4 length of wing, forked. 



Color. — .^DULT M.M.E : Head. neck. rump, and 

 upper tail-coverts. light cerulean or turquoise blue, 

 changing to light greenish-blue (Nile blue) : back, 

 shoulders, and lesser wing-coverts, darker and (espe- 

 cially back) duller blue; middle wing-coverts, very 



Drawing by R. I. Brasher 



LAZDXI BtJNTING (', nat. size) 

 A handsome songster of the western mountains and valleys 



