Indigo Bunting
Passerina cyanea · Songbirds
Indigo Bunting, male
Prospect Park, 23 May 2026
A male Indigo Bunting in Prospect Park in late May, back from Central America to breed at the edges of woods and old fields across the East. In the park it turns up for a few days on passage and occasionally stays.
None of that blue is pigment. An Indigo Bunting's feathers contain no blue pigment at all - the colour comes from the microscopic structure of the feather scattering light, the same effect behind a blue sky, over a base of black melanin. They also migrate at night, and are one of the few songbirds known to navigate by the stars, learning the night sky's rotation around Polaris as fledglings before ever making the journey.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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