Indigo Bunting

Maria and I were bird watching; in particular, we were hoping to see a dozen or more warbler species. It was May 15, sunny and warm, and we were at Bowman's Bridge on the Pere Marquette river in upper Michigan. Gnats were glad we had arrived and soon were our new best friends. We tried to stay in the open which helped a little. Maria spotted the American redstarts which Pete Dunne calls "flash dancers" since they flit about the woods, the males flashing orange and black, the females more subdued but also flashing the yellow in their tales. Soon, we saw several pairs and the next day even discovered one of their nests.

The river is lovely here as it makes a broad 90-degree turn around the area we were birding with the sun glinting off the water, huge old snags disrupting the flow, fresh green foliage, adjacent wet bottomlands, the bright blue sky, birds calling all around, soaring Turkey vultures and Bald eagles.

I was walking back to the car and Maria frantically motioned me over. She had spotted an Indigo bunting! It stayed around a bit longer and I got to see it. Really, it was utterly lovely, foraging on the forest floor, just off the parking lot, not in the shadows but highlighted by sunshine and looking out of place somehow, since this bird is all blue...as Maria said, an "electric blue," bluer than the sky, a richer blue than bluejays or bluebirds.

Seeing this small brilliant blue-soaked bit of a bird in the brown leaf litter and lush new spring greenery of a Michigan woods was perfection. The afterglow of such encounters lingers...

We didn't see our dozen warblers, only the Redstarts and a Magnolia warbler, so the bunting sighting was our day's best bird, if we don't count the Solitary sandpiper which was seriously feeding along the shoreline at Townsend most of the day and was a life bird for Maria.