My wife and I decided to erect a small birdfeeder a couple of weeks ago. We put it pretty close to one of the windows so the young’un can see it. Her toy box is right under the window, so she is standing there pretty often. The window is low enough to the floor so that she can peek out of it if she tiptoes.

I was talking to my wife on my way home from work one day and she was telling about this pretty blue bird that was on the feeder. I thought that she was talking about a blue jay. I get home and see this fella on the feeder. I had no idea what kind of bird it was, so I took a photo (through the window screen) and asked a few people at work if they knew what it was. I was told that it was an Indigo Bunting. Funny thing, as I had never even heard of these birds, and I cannot remember ever seeing one. From my quick research, it appears that they are quite abundant. I guess that I just need to start looking!

Some quick 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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 10:59 am and is filed under West Virginia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.