i8o Bird -Lore 



In vain did I search among contemporary writers for a description of 

 this phenomenon, which appears only in the plumage of the fully developed 

 male of two or more years of age. Finally, I chanced, in searching Alexander 

 Wilson's American Ornithology for a different matter, to find the only 

 adequate pen-picture of this bird that I know. Of its plumage he says: 

 There is one singularity, viz., that in some lights, his plumage appears of a 

 rich sky-blue, and in others of a vivid verdigris green : so that the same bird, in 

 passing from one place to another before your eyes, seems to undergo a total 

 change of color. When the angle of incidence of the rays of light reflected 

 from his plumage is acute, the color is green; when obtuse, blue. Such, I 

 think, I have observed to be uniformly the case, without being optician 

 enough to explain why it is so. From this, however, must be excepted 

 the color of the head, which is not affected by the change of position." 



The nest, in no wise typical, is a loose and rather careless 



His Nest structure of grass, twigs, horse-hairs, roots or bits of bark 



placed in a low, scrubby tree or bush at no great distance 



from the ground, and the eggs are a very pale blue or bluish white, and 



only three or four in number. 



Being a seed -eater, it is undoubtedly this Bunting's love 

 His Travels of warmth that gives him so short a season with us; for he 

 does not come to the New England states until the first week 

 in May, and, after the August molt, when he dons the sober clothing of his 

 mate, he begins to work southward by middle of September, — those from 

 the most northerly portions of the breeding range, which extends northward 

 to Minnesota and Nova Scotia, having passed by the tenth of October. It 

 winters in Central America and southward. 



Although of the insect -eating fraternity of the conical 

 His Food beak, the Indigo Bunting consumes many noxious insects in 



the nesting season, when the rapid growth of the young 

 •demands animal food, no matter to what race they belong. Being an 

 inhabitant of the overgrown edges of old pastures, or the brushy fences of 

 clearings and pent -roads, he is in a position where he can do a great deal 

 of good. Mr. Forbush, is his valuable book on Useful Birds and Their Pro- 

 tection, credits the Indigo Bunting with being a consumer of the larvx of 

 the mischievous brown -tail moth; but, whatever service it may do as an 

 insect destroyer, its service the year through as a consumer of weed seeds, 

 in common with the rest of its tribe, is beyond dispute. 



The voice of the Indigo Bunting is pretty rather than 

 His Song impressive, and varies much in individuals. It consists of a 



series of hurried canary-like notes repeated constantly and ris- 

 ing in key, but, to my mind, never reaching the dignity of being called an 

 impressive song. Yet on this point opinions differ, and Wilson calls it "a 

 vigorous and pretty good songster. It mounts to the highest top of a tree, 



