On a recent morning, as the dog and I were ambling around the yard, a flash of brilliant blue caught my eye.
Not sky blue, or oceanic blue, or gentian blue. Not azure or cobalt, lapis or cerulean.
Darker than topaz, less purple than sapphire—yet containing elements of both, the blue I saw was intense, bold, vibrant. Unforgettable.
A blue so distinctive it has its own name: indigo.
In keeping with the verity that all exquisite things are invariably small, thus demanding we look carefully and close, it followed that this unique blue belonged to a diminutive bird. A finely wrought little bird feathered in a blue even bluer than the heavens it so intimately knows and dashingly cleaves while flitting and flying about. A bird from a child’s coloring book, crayoned in with youthful imagination. One you might conjure up yourself in a dream.
But this was not a colorized fantasy of exuberant imagination. Rather, it was a male indigo bunting—a bird I’ve been delighted by practically forever. A living creature, perhaps 30 feet away, busily investigating a mixed bed of red bergamot and purple coneflowers.
I was mildly surprised to see this bird in the yard. Indigo buntings aren’t regular visitors here along the river. Yet, every so often, one—doubtless working its way along the stream’s timbered corridor—makes an investigatory detour into the more open yard to see what tasty tidbits might be available.
It always amazes me how many folks have never seen a male indigo bunting. Their immediate reaction is astonished disbelief. They’re simply dumfounded, or as the Brits like to put it, gobsmacked!
“That can’t be a real bird!” they exclaim. “Not here in Ohio!”
The most flabbergasted are dedicated urban dwellers or those who seldom pay attention to roadside fauna on infrequent occasions when their GPS routes them along a country road.
An indigo bunting is just too splendid and too dazzling for their restrained Midwestern sensibilities to initially grasp.
When I tell them indigo buntings are common to abundant locally, and in every corner of the Buckeye State, they can’t believe this fact—it’s simply too preposterous! They gape at me like I’m telling them wooly mammoths regularly lurk in Kroger parking lots.
A strikingly blue indigo bunting is too tropical-plumaged, too exotic and stunningly different from the sparrows they see daily along the sidewalks, can’t possibly be fellow residents!
Accepting the truth of their long-term personal obliviousness is sometimes hard to swallow.
“All you have to do is find a brushy field or fencerow, meadow edge, roadside, prairie, or woodland border,” I say,” and you’re guaranteed to see a few indigo buntings.”
And it’s true! The fact of the matter is, no matter where you live, in which quadrant of our fair state, prime indigo bunting territory is close—minutes away. You’ll not have to travel far to see one. A slow drive and the nearest country lane or rural blacktop will do. If there’s an acre or two of ragged fields nearby or merely a grassy road bank with an overgrown fence line, chances are there are also indigo buntings.
I’ve been captivated by these lovely blue birds since early childhood when my father began taking me along on his fishing trips to Twin Creek. On the way to the stream, while Dad tooled the old Olds 98 down the bumpy backroads, I’d be chattering away—looking out the open passenger window at the passing landscape, sniffing heady country air, feeling the wind in my hair and the sun on my forearm. As excited by such sensory overload as a tail-wagging retriever pup.
Indigo buntings were always part of the scenery—as inevitable as the roadside rows of green field corn, as anticipated as the long hillside near the creek where Holsteins grazed like a slow-motion checkerboard. We often counted indigo buntings for fun as we traveled, and I don’t think we ever made a single trip to Twin Creek without sighting at least one along the way.
From the first, I loved both the bird and name. Indigo bunting! Not just another blue-named bird such as bluebird, blue jay, or blue heron—but a word designating a special shade of blue. Surely, I reasoned, this must therefore imply a special bird.
However, the word “bunting” was puzzling. I’d heard my mother sometimes speak of sewing bunting on dresses. But how did bunting apply to a bird?
Dad explained that originally bunting was a sort of shiny fabric—much like ribbon. Sunlight shining on an indigo bunting’s feathers reflects light in that same shimmery way.
Indigo buntings are members of the finch family. Migratory summer residents hereabouts—come to raise a family, but preferring to spend their winters in climes south, usually Central Mexico, Central America, and the northern end of South America.
As noted earlier, indigo buntings are small birds—about the size of field sparrows. Inhabiting old fields and woodland edges, they prefer lands more brushy than cleanly open, more country than suburban. They feed on insects and seeds. Their song is a short, lively warble, quite musical.
Only the male birds are dressed in their namesake indigo blue feathers; females wear a dull brown.
The real kicker is the indigo bunting’s blue feathers aren’t actually blue. That astonishing iridescent shade doesn’t come from pigmentation, but rather from the structure of the feathers themselves and the way they scatter light. Indigo buntings are actually a ho-hum grayish-brown.
No, I’m not making this up! This eye-foolery is, in fact, the case of all seemingly blue birds. True natural blue doesn’t occur in feathers. No blue-appearing bird is genuinely blue—not bluebirds, blue jays, blue herons, or blue parrots. It’s a visual trick. Natural magic. We “see” what isn’t there, leftover light that’s reflected back rather than absorbed—not that it makes a male indigo bunting any less spectacular.
There are still indigo buntings along the country roads leading to Twin Creek. And sometimes an indigo bunting visits my own riverside yard!
And I’m still as enchanted as ever by these petite feathered beauties in their vivid, iridescent, and heart-lifting namesake blue.
Reach Jim McGuire at [email protected].
