Lazuli Bunting Gallery
Passerina amoena
eBird offers this description of the Lazuli Bunting: Breeding males are bright blue above with bold white wingbars, white belly, and orange breast. Sing from tops of shrubs during the breeding season. Females are plain buffy brown with faint wingbars and slightly brighter breast. Never shows faint streaks below like female Indigo Bunting often does; throat not as contrastingly white. Found in shrubby, sometimes arid habitats, favoring bushy hillsides and slopes. Occasionally visits feeders. All About Birds adds this descriptive info about the Lazuli Bunting: The male Lazuli Bunting lights up dry brushy hillsides, thickets, and gardens throughout the West, flashing the blue of a lapis gemstone mixed with splashes of orange. He belts out his squeaky and jumbling song from atop shrubs to defend his territory. The softly colored female is often nearby teetering on tiny stems in a balancing act to reach seeds and other fare. This stocky finchlike bird is related to cardinals and grosbeaks and often visits bird feeders, especially those filled with white proso millet.
I was excited and delighted to see several Lazuli Buntings on my birthday Birding trip in late August/early September of 2020. I saw and photographed this bird at Christmas Mountains Oasis and at Davis Mountains State Park.
“Cool Facts” about the Lazuli Bunting from All About Birds…
- Most species molt their feathers on either the breeding grounds or wintering grounds, but not the Lazuli Bunting. After breeding, they start molting some feathers but then migrate to the southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico, where insects are abundant following monsoon rains. They finish replacing their feathers in these “molting hotspots” before they head farther south for the winter.
- We recognize people by their voice and Lazuli Buntings may do the same thing. When young males copy older, nearby males, they create a kind of “song neighborhood” where songs from a particular area all sound similar. Males from the same neighborhood learn to recognize and tolerate each other. They respond more aggressively to unfamiliar songs that come from outside their neighborhood.
- The beauty of the Lazuli Bunting did not escape the early naturalist who named it Passerina amoena, meaning beautiful sparrow.
- Just like we each have our own voice, each male Lazuli Bunting sings a unique combination of notes. Yearling males generally arrive on the breeding grounds without a song of their own. Shortly after arriving, they create their own song by rearranging syllables and combining song fragments of several males. The song they put together is theirs for life.
- The oldest recorded Lazuli Bunting was a male, and at least 9 years, 1 month old when he was recaptured and rereleased during banding operations in Idaho in 1990. He had been banded in the same state in 1981.