The Indigo Bunting is 4.7-5.1 inches (12-13 cm) in length with a wingspan of 7.5-8.7 inches (19-22 cm).
It has a small, cone-shaped bill and gray or black legs and feet. The male is a bright blue during the breeding season and a duller blue in the winter. The female is brown with a lighter streaked breast and a touch of blue on her tail and shoulders.
During the breeding season, the male chooses and defends a breeding territory. The female Indigo Bunting chooses a nesting site and builds a nest of leaves, grass, and bark in a shrub.
She lays 1-5 eggs and incubates them for 12-14 days. The female feeds and cares for the chicks. The chicks fledge when they are 8-14 days old, but stay with the female for a few more weeks. The female may have more than one brood a year.
The Indigo Bunting has a lifespan of up to 10 years in the wild.
The Indigo Bunting is a neotropical migrator. A neotropical migrator breeds in Canada and the U.S. and winters in Mexico, Central America, South America, or the Caribbean. It usually migrates at night and can travel as far as 2,000 miles to its winter range.
Indigo is a bright blue color. Indigo Buntings may look bright blue, but they do not actually have blue pigment in their feathers. Instead, their color comes from tiny structures in their feathers that bend and reflect light.
These microscopic structures scatter sunlight in a way that sends more blue light to our eyes. This is called structural coloration.
It is a bit like the sky: the sky looks blue not because it has blue pigment, but because air scatters sunlight so that blue light is the color we see most often.
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The Indigo Bunting breeds across New Hampshire. They migrate south in the fall.
The Indigo Bunting breeds from the Great Plains south to Texas through the eastern United States.
It winters from southern Florida south to the Caribbean, Central America, and northern South America.
There are isolated populations found in some areas of the western United States.
