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Three Buntings - Indigo, Lazuli, and Painted
And oh! What colors!
© Greg Lavaty
Each spring and summer, Indigo Buntings sing their buzzy, jumbled songs from brushy edges throughout the Eastern US. West of the Rockies, a different bunting sings his song. Named for the gemstone lapis lazuli, a male Lazuli Bunting shimmers an iridescent azure. He looks as if he might have been fashioned by a maker of Navajo jewelry. Yet another bunting sings atop thickets and shrubs in the Southeast and south-central US – the Painted Bunting, perhaps one of the most colorful birds in all of North America. Enjoy the bunting singing in your neck of the woods this summer, for this fall, they’ll all be gone to the tropics until next spring.
BirdNote®
Three Buntings
Written by Bob Sundstrom
This is BirdNote.
[Indigo Bunting song]
Each spring and summer, Indigo Buntings sing their buzzy, jumbled songs from brushy edges throughout the Eastern US. [Indigo Bunting song] The sparkling blue males, are one of the best known and most colorful birds of the region.
[Indigo Bunting song]
West of the Rockies, a different bunting, a Lazuli Bunting, sings his song. [Lazuli Bunting song] He’s named for the gemstone lapis lazuli, and his head and back shimmer an iridescent azure. Together with a red-orange breast and bold white wing patches, he looks like he might have been fashioned by a maker of Navajo jewelry.
[Lazuli Bunting song]
Yet another bunting sings atop thickets and shrubs in the Southeast and South-central US. [Painted Bunting song] And if the first two buntings – Indigo and Lazuli – are avian gems, many would equate this third bunting, the Painted Bunting, with the Crown Jewels. [Painted Bunting song] A male Painted Bunting, with a bold blue head, ruby-red breast, and a back of burnished apple green, is one of the most dramatically colorful birds you’ll see in all of North America. [Painted Bunting song]
Enjoy the bunting singing in your neck of the woods this summer, for with the arrival of fall, Indigo [Indigo Bunting song], Lazuli, [Lazuli Bunting song] and Painted, too, [Painted Bunting song] will be gone to the tropics until next spring.
For BirdNote, I’m Mary McCann. [Indigo Bunting in background]
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Sounds of the birds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Indigo Bunting 73948 recorded by G.A. Keller; Lazuli Bunting 111055 by T.G. Sander; Painted Bunting 105245 by G.A. Keller.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2012 Tune In to Nature.org June 2017/2021 Narrator: Mary McCann
ID# bunting-01-2012-06-03
Sights & Sounds
