Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea)

County List:

Rule:

Forested or Nonforested Landscapes

      (Any Upland Deciduous (Regen))
      or (Mixed Northern Hardwoods (Regen))
      or (Mixed Upland Hardwoods (Regen))
      or (Any Lowland Deciduous (Regen))
      or Upland Brush
      or Savanna

Habitat List:

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Literature:

Habitat: Indigo Buntings live in brushy and weedy habitats along the edges of cultivated lands, woods, roads, power line rights-of-way, and railway sidings. They also live in open deciduous woods in clearings where trees have fallen, in old fields where farming has been abandoned, in weedy cultivated fields, and in swamps. Buntings are most common in habitats with blackberries, raspberries, gray dogwoods, staghorn sumac, and other shrubs or saplings with forking, horizontal branches under their leaves. The nests are usually within one meter of the ground under the leaf canopy. Later in summer the buntings also nest in herbs such as bracken, goldenrod, and giant ragweed. Some individuals that nested in upland areas in spring move in summer into swamps and nest again in elderberries and rank herbs such as nettles and purple loosestrife. They also move into weedy old fields and cultivated fields and nest in herbs such as dogbane and common thistle.

Buntings are scarce or absent in urban areas, in heavily wooded habitats, and in intensively cultivated lands. Buntings settle in abandoned farm fields and roadside scrapings with a few years after the land is left alone, depending on soil moisture and growth of vegetation.

Buntings appear and settle with the cutting of forests and with abandonment of agriculture. They disappear when the habitat becomes built up with cities and residential developments where the wild herbs and shrubs are cut away, where farms are intensively cultivated or pastured, or where forests grow and replace earlier clearings.

Habitat: Breeding: Edges of woods, old burns, open brushy fields, roadside thickets, brushy ravines. Tends to be numerous along creeks and rivers. Avoids deep woods.

Special Habitat Requirements: Brushy vegetation, elevated perches.

Habitat: Brushy pastures, brushy wood edges. For nesting, favors roadsides, old fields growing up to bushes, edges of woodlands, and other edge habitats such as along rights-of-way for power lines or railroads. Also in clearings within deciduous woods, edges of swamps.

Diet: Mostly seeds and insects. In breeding season feeds mostly on insects and spiders, also some seeds, berries. Young in the nest are fed mostly insects at first.

Nest: Site is usually 1-3 feet above ground, rarely up to 30 feet or more, in dense shrub or low tree. Late in season, may nest in large weed such as goldenrod. Nest is an open cup of grass, leaves, weeds, bark strips, lined with finer materials.

Conservation Status: Does well in brushy rural areas but not in urbanized areas or regions of intense agriculture.