Indigo Bunting

Status Uncommon vagrant. Several nineteenth-century authors referred to the Indigo Bunting as rare without providing details, and Chamberlain (1881) obtained specimens from a "remarkable flight" to Brier Island on 15 April 1881, an event much like recent ones. In the first three decades of the twentieth century only four sightings were reported, but since then there have been over 150 records, representing hundreds of birds in all, from all parts of the province, but mostly from the southwestern counties. They have arrived virtually every spring, usually first in April (average 19 April, earliest 28 March), with numbers increasing in May.

In some years, major "invasions' have been recorded: there were at least 60 individuals in 1963: and over 100 in 1984, including 12 at a feeder on Brier Island and 22 males and 5 females counted by Jerome D'Eon in the Pubnico area of Yarmouth County. Latest sightings have been generally in May (average 24 May; latest 24 June 1962 on Brier Island). The status of occasional singing males in June and of a bird on 5 July 1961 at Bridgetown, Annapolis County, remain uncertain, given the late occurrences of birds that are clearly migrants. It has been less regular and less abundant as a fall migrant, first reports not generally before mid-September (average 2 October, earliest 13 September); a bird on Sable Island on 14 August 1969 was unusually early. Last sightings are routine in late October and occasional in November (average 19 October, latest 30 November). A straggler occurred at Liverpool on 8 December 1960 and another was photographed at Porters Lake, Halifax County, during the Halifax East Christmas Bird Count on 15 December 1979.

Remarks The rich indigo blue of adult males in spring and the plain brown plumages of females and young birds are distinctive. These small sparrow-billed birds breed throughout the eastern United States and southeastern Canada, and rarely to southern New Brunswick. There is something enigmatical about their appearance in Nova Scotia. In the first place, when our April birds began their northward migration, they probably had no intention of coming to Nova Scotia. Brewster (1906) tells us that the normal time of their arrival at Cambridge, Massachusetts, is 15 May, and Palmer (1949) says that they reach Maine, where they breed, between 11 and 18 May. Why then do they come here in fairly large numbers so much earlier and with such regularity? The theory that they are "storm-blown strays" seems at first tenable, but their regularity, year after year, tends to rule out that idea. Storms don't occur with that much regularity! And where do they go after their sojourns here? True, some are picked up dead, but that does not account for the numbers that are seen in April and May. Perhaps many of them are re-oriented and return south.