(Passerina amoena)
Summer
Winter
HABITAT: Various brushy habitats, from arid hillsides to streamside, chaparral to sagebrush, agricultural fields to residential gardens
DESCRIPTION: Male is bright blue on head, back, and rump, and rusty red on breast, white belly and wing bars; yearling male duller with more brown; female brownish overall with tinge of blue on rump and rust on breast
Pick out a brightly colored adult male, one who’s two years or older, and just listen. He’s the master of his two-second song, repeating it predictably time after time; hear the repeated phrases at the beginning, often in pairs, how he hurries from one series to the next, often leading to a jumble of notes and ending with either a buzz or a beep. It’s lively and pleasing, vivacious, bright and musical, sweet, cheerful, well measured, and much like the song of the eastern Indigo Bunting but maybe slightly faster and a little less strident. He’s persistent, too, as he sings through the heat of the day and well into July.
Only by listening to a yearling in the few days after he first arrives from migration can one understand how a male bunting comes to sing the way he does. In his youthful plumage he arrives with a rudimentary song that is short, simple, and unsteady. He quickly copies phrases from older males in the neighborhood, sometimes copying an entire song, sometimes copying and pasting together bits of songs from several males. He practices, shuffling phrases about, successive songs all different, all the while somehow deciding exactly which song is right for him. Within days he has chosen his song, often a perfect match of an adult neighbor, so that two or more males in a small neighborhood come to have identical songs.
Listen for these mini-dialects among neighbors, with songs of two or more males matching one another. Look at the singers, too, identifying the yearlings and their older neighbors, so that you see and hear them as individuals and know who has learned his song from whom.
Three renditions of one male’s song Three renditions of another male’s song 
