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The Indigo Bunting 
of this phenomenon, which appears only in the plumage of the fully 
developed male of two or more years o-f 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, that in some lights 
his plumage appears of a rich sky-blue, and, in others, of 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. . . From this, 
however, must be excepted the color of the head, which is not affected 
by the change of position.” 
The nest, in no way typical, is a loose and rather careless structure 
of grass, twigs, horse-hair, roots, or bits of bark and 
Nest dead leaves, placed in a low, scrubby tree, or in a bush 
at no great distance from the ground ; and the three or 
four eggs are very pale blue and unspotted. 
Miss Lillian Cleveland, in Bird-Lore, for May-June, 1903, gives a 
very interesting account of the nesting of a pair of these birds in a 
deutzia bush, close to her house, at West Medford, Massachusetts. The 
building-operation was first discovered on May 26, when the female 
alighted for a moment on the porch-rail, with material in her bill. On 
the 30th, the nest appeared to be finished, and the birds were not seen 
about it for several days, but on June 3 it contained one egg. Another 
was added on the following day, and a third on the 5th, after which 
the female began incubation, while the male sang from the tree-tops 
in a neighboring field, but apparently carefully avoided approaching the 
vicinity of the nest. The young were hatched on June 17. The food that 
was carried to the babies appeared to be entirely soft 
Fledglings green worms, and grasshoppers about three-quarters 
of an inch in length. The mother-bird had a busy 
time hunting grasshoppers, which she did by hovering over the uncut 
grass in an adjoining field. 
On June 26 the little ones began leaving the nest, hopping from twig 
to twig among the shrubs. They developed very fast, and by the second 
day could hop along the ground in a lively manner. That evening a 
small gray ball rolled down the walk, which, upon investigation, proved 
to be a refractory young bunting. It was picked up and placed in a 
bed in a strawberry-basket tied in the porch-railing near the nest ; and 
at four o’clock the next morning the little bird was sitting on the edge 
of the basket calling for breakfast. The father-bird was not seen dur- 
ing the period of caring for the young until June 28, when, after appar- 
ently shirking previous work, he came to see the fun that Mrs. Indigo 
was having with her young. On the next morning the parents coaxed 
the little family into the higher trees, and that was the last that the ob- 
server saw of them. 
Although belonging to the insect-eating fraternity of the conical beak, 
the Indigo Bunting consumes many noxious insects in the nesting-sea- 
