#Indigo meaning in song series#

The buntings can be beneficial to farmers, as they eat many insect pests and weed seeds. They feast on spiders and small insects during the summer, getting the extra protein they need for successful nesting, then eat seeds, buds, and berries during migration and in winter.

Indigo Buntings, like their close relatives the Painted and Varied Buntings, alter their diet seasonally. Females, juveniles, and males in winter plumage are an unassuming tawny brown. Only males have blue plumage, and then only during their breeding season. Like Black-throated Blue Warbler and Scarlet Tanager, the Indigo Bunting is a sexually dimorphic species. Similar to Song Sparrows, juvenile male Indigo Buntings observe and imitate older males when learning to sing, later developing their own unique phrasings. Their sharp 'spik' call note is often heard and easy to recognize. Even on the hottest summer days, they can be spotted warbling their sweet, double-noted song from treetops, telephone wires, and other elevated perches. Male Indigo Buntings are persistent singers. Protect buntings and other birds by pledging to keep cats safely contained. Many fall victim to collisions with windows, wind turbines, and communications towers, or are preyed upon by introduced predators, particularly cats. Unfortunately, Indigo Buntings must fly through a gauntlet of threats during their twice-yearly travels.

The results proved that Indigo Buntings (and other nocturnal migrants) use the movement of the stars to navigate during migration. Scientists placed caged buntings inside a planetarium, manipulated star patterns, and noted the directions the birds attempted to fly in response.

#Indigo meaning in song series#

Indigo Buntings played a central role in a series of orientation and navigation experiments conducted on migratory birds during the 1960s. In poor lighting, the bunting's glorious colors disappear and it becomes a plain, dark-colored finch.īut Indigo Buntings are more than a treat for the eyes - this species also helped reveal some important secrets about how birds migrate. But these beautiful colors are illusory: Like the iridescence of hummingbirds and the blue plumage of other species such as Eastern Bluebird, the male Indigo Bunting owes its glorious appearance to an optical trick - the diffraction of light through its feathers. A male Indigo Bunting in breeding plumage is a glorious symphony of shimmering blues, turquoises, and purples.