FAMILY Fringillide. 
be valued less for its melody than for its incomparable 
dancing tempo and its inimitable tenderness. If the 
music were embodied in a form easily interpreted by the 
piano, it would appear thus: 
filtes 
Scherzando 
con express, one, 
TSA" Gd hei Ba 
j ACD Ge ES a 
Indigo Bunting The intensely blue Indigo Bunting, or In- 
Bs TE! digo Bird, often appears a mere tiny black 
cyanea ; ; ae 
L.5.ssinches Silhouette against the brilliant sky as he 
May i2th is perched in his favorite commanding 
position on the topmost twig of the towering tree beside 
the road. That is the place where it has been my cus- 
tom to find him. But fora better view of his magnifi- 
cent color we must wait for him to descend from his 
high perch, or else, in some manner, we must endeavor 
to gain a position between him and the sun so its rays 
will illuminate his intense and lustrous plumage. Ex- 
cepting his wings and tail which are black margined 
with blue, his whole body is a deep Prussian blue of an 
iridescent quality comparable only to that which we see 
on the Peacock’s neck. The color is deepest on the 
head, and brightest on the back and neck; the cheeks 
are blackish. The female is brown, streaked above, and 
pale on the under parts fading to brown-white; wings 
and tail brown faintly margined with blue. Nest usu- 
ally placed near the ground in the Y of a bush or 
shrub, and made up of dead leaves, grasses, plant fibres, 
and bark, lined with horse-hair and other fine material. 
Egg blue-white. The bird is common throughout the 
eastern United States; it winters in Central America. 
The song of the Indigo Bunting is one of the most en- 
livening and cheerful little lays which one may hear 
136 
