One More Indigo

Just one more Indigo Bunting on a sunflower. Some fun facts from All About Birds: “Like all other blue birds, Indigo Buntings lack blue pigment. Their jewel-like color comes instead from microscopic structures in the feathers that refract and reflect blue light, much like the airborne particles that cause the sky to look blue. Their plumage does contain the pigment melanin, whose dull brown-black hue you can see if you hold a blue feather up so the light comes from behind it, instead of toward it.” Male Indigo Buntings get their beautiful blue during the breeding season (summer), but are brown during the winter months; the female is brown all year long.