98 BIRDS 



The Indigo Bunting 



Length — 5 .5 to 6 inches. Smaller than the English sparrow. 

 Male — Rich blue, with verdigris tints; deepest on head. 



Wings, tail, and lower back with brownish wash, most 



prominent in autumn plumage. Quills of wings and 



tail deep blue, margined with light. 

 Female — Brown above; yellowish on breast, shading to 



white underneath, and indistinctly streaked. Wings and 



tail darkest, sometimes with shght tinge of blue in outer 



webs and on shoulders. 

 Range — ^North America, from Hudson Bay to Panama. 



Most common in eastern part of United States. Win-> 



ters in Central America and Mexico. 

 Migrations — ^May. September. Summer resident. 



The "glowing indigo" of this tropical-looking visitor 

 that so delighted Thoreau in the Walden woods, often 

 seems only the more intense by comparison with the blue 

 sky, against which it stands out in rehef as the bird perches, 

 singing, in a low tree-top. What has this gaily dressed, 

 dapper little cavalier in common with his dingy sparrow 

 cousins that haunt the ground and delight in dust-baths, 

 leaving their feathers no whit more dingy than they were 

 before, and in temper, as in plumage, suggesting more of 

 earth than of heaven.? Apparently he has nothing, and 

 yet the smaU brown bird in the roadside thicket, which you 

 have misnamed a sparrow, not noticing the glint of blue in 

 her shoulders and taU, is his mate. Besides the structural 

 resemblances, which are, of course, the only ones consid- 

 ered by ornithologists in classifying birds, the indigo 

 buntings have several sparrow-like traits. They feed 



