Go For Indigo

With a little landscape planning and their favorite seed at your feeder, you can enjoy this bunting’s brilliant beauty.

- Rachael Liska

SOCIAL BY THE SEASON

During summer breeding season, indigo buntings hunt alone for food within their nesting territory. In winter, they often roost and forage in flocks.

The size of a sparrow but more finchlike in appearance, an indigo bunting is truly dazzling. But its flashy hue is not really indigo at all. In fact, no bird has a true blue pigment in its feathers. “The color occurs as an interaction of light within a complex feather structure,” says nature columnist, birder and author Gary Clark.

It takes a male bunting two years to reach its full iridescent splendor (which he loses every winter as he molts into brownish feathers). In the meantime, younger males sport splotches of brown and other off-color shades, while the females are tan with a whitish throat.