Blue Bunting

About the Blue Bunting

The Blue Bunting is a small, thick-billed Mexican songbird. The male is deep blue-black all over with glowing cobalt highlights on the crown, face, and shoulder - darker and richer than an Indigo Bunting, with a distinctly curved upper bill edge. The female is a warm, unmarked cinnamon-brown.

Blue Buntings keep to dense thickets and tangled woodland edge, feeding low on seeds and insects and rarely sitting in the open for long. The call, a sharp metallic "chink," is often the first sign of one working through cover.

The species is resident in Mexico and Central America. In the United States it is a rare winter visitor to the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, where single birds turn up some winters at feeding stations and brushy parks - always a find that draws birders from across the country.