The Indigo Bunting 
107 
son, 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. Edward 
H. Forbush, in his valuable book on ‘‘Useful Birds and Food 
Their Protection,” credits the Indigo Bunting with 
being a consumer of the larvae of the mischievous brown-tailed moth ; but 
whatever good 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 impressive, 
and varies much in individuals. It consists of a series of hurried Canary- 
like notes, repeated constantly, and rising in keys, 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.” He also says: “It mounts to the highest top of a tree, 
and chants for half an hour at a time.” Its song is not one continuous 
strain, but a repetition of short notes, commencing loud and rapid, and 
falling by almost imperceptible gradations, for six 
or eight seconds, until they seem hardly articulate, as Song 
if the little minstrel were quite exhausted ; and, after 
a pause of half a minute or less, commences as before. The Indigo 
Bird sings with as much animation in the month of July as in the month 
of May, and not infrequently continues his song until the last of August. 
Being a seed-eater, it is undoubtedly this Bunting’s love of warmth 
that gives him so short a season with us; for he does not usually 
come to the Northern 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, the first departing by the middle of September. Those 
from the most northerly portions of the breeding-range have passed us 
in Connecticut by the tenth of October. 
Nuttall writes that, though usually shy, Indigo Birds during the nest- 
ing season are more frequently seen near habitations than in remote 
thickets : “Their favorite resort is the garden, where from the top- 
most branch of some tall tree that commands the whole wide landscape, 
the male regularly pours out his lively chant, and continues it for a con- 
siderable length of time. Nor is this song confined to 
the cool and animating dawn of morning, but it! is 
renewed, and still more vigorous, during the noonday 
heat of summer. . . I have also heard a Canary, within hearing, repeat 
and imitate the low, lisping trill of the Indigo Bird, whose warble, indeed, 
often resembles that of this species.” 
This combination of musical ability, lovely plumage and seed-eating 
quality long threatened the Indigo Bunting with extermination, because 
it has been habitually captured and sold as a cage-bird throughout the 
South, both for home use and for export. In that region the bird is 
Midsummer 
Music 
