Indigo Bunting

Indigo Buntings are small (roughly sparrow-sized), stocky birds with short tails and short, thick, conical bills.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Indigo_Bunting/id

This is my all time favorite bird.  Partly because I am partial to blue and partly because when we owned the sticks and bricks house in Kansas I only saw them in the spring on their migration to the North.

I didn't start birdwatching until we built a screen porch on the front of our house off of the kitchen.  Just outside the South side was a small patch of woods and this made us feel just a little isolated in our little porch.  I put a couple of bird feeders out and right away attracted all the usual suspects.  Sparrows of all sorts, Gold Finches, House Finches and the scourge of bird feeders, Cowbirds.

Right below the bird feeders was a patch of Honeysuckle that attracted the occasional Oriole.  What a beautiful and distinctive song they have.  

We also quite often had Downy Woodpeckers and Yellow Bellied Woodpeckers. Attracting those soon bit us in the butt, as one of them decided the high eave of our house would be a great place to peck out a hole and build a home.

Anyway, the first time I saw a flash of blue I had to know what it was I was almost seeing.  I pulled out my field guide and started flipping.  When I came across the Indigo Bunting I was just thrilled.  What a beautiful little bird.  I had no problem sitting for long periods of time just waiting for them at the feeder, then I started noticing them in the trees.  The bright blue was quite easy to spot in the green leaves.  

I wish I could say I had a picture of my own, but with moving everything around in computers, I can't find them.  Suffice it to say, you should keep an eye out for these very pretty little birds.  This is the time of year they start migrating from Central America to North America.