Measurements
Both Sexes
- Length
- 4.7–5.1 in
12–13 cm - Wingspan
- 7.5–8.7 in
19–22 cm - Weight
- 0.4–0.6 oz
12–18 g
Other Names
- Passerin indigo (French)
- Azulito, Gorrión, Ruicito (Spanish)
Cool Facts
- The Indigo Bunting migrates at night, using the stars for guidance. It learns its orientation to the night sky from its experience as a young bird observing the stars.
- Experienced adult Indigo Buntings can return to their previous breeding sites when held captive during the winter and released far from their normal wintering area.
- The sequences of notes in Indigo Bunting songs are unique to local neighborhoods. Males a few hundred meters apart generally have different songs. Males on neighboring territories often have the same or nearly identical songs.
- Indigo and Lazuli buntings defend territories against each other in the western Great Plains where they occur together, share songs, and sometimes interbreed.
Habitat
Open Woodland
Breeds in brushy and weedy areas along edges of cultivated land, woods, roads, power line rights-of-way, and in open deciduous woods and old fields. Winters in weedy fields, citrus orchards, and weedy cropland.
Food
Insects
Small insects, spiders, seeds, buds, and berries.
Nesting
Nesting Facts
- Clutch Size
- 1–4 eggs
- Egg Description
- Unmarked white; a few have brownish spots.
- Condition at Hatching
- Helpless with sparse down.
Nest Description
Open cup of soft leaves, coarse grasses, stems, and strips of bark, held in place with spider web, lined with fine grasses or deer hair. Placed in shrub or herbaceous plant close to ground.
Nest Placement
Shrub
Behavior
Foliage Gleaner
Gleans insects off of branches. Feeds in flocks in winter.
Conservation
Least Concern
Abundant. May be declining slightly in Southeast.
Credits
- Payne, R. B. 1992. Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea). In The Birds of North America, No. 4 (A. Poole, Peter Stettenheim, and F. Gill, Eds.). Philadelphia: The Academy of Natural Sciences; Washington, DC; The American Ornithologists' Union.