Nothing else looks like the male lazuli bunting, a small bird with a bright blue head and back, orange-brown chest and sides, and white wing bars. The fast, high song with tones that rise and fall could be mistaken for a warbler’s song, but identifying this songster is easier for the bird watcher because the bunting sings from an exposed perch. The male moves around his territory and sings from up on an electric wire, and then from the top of a snag or shrub. Not only is he sitting up high, but he will be singing from these high spots all day long, even through the heat of mid-day when most birds are silent. With this lovely song he is proclaiming that this is the location the pair has chosen for nesting and raising a family.

Buntings may catch insects in the air but usually feed near the ground, gleaning leaves for insects, or hopping along the ground for insects and seeds. The nest is a cup made of dried grasses, well hidden in a tangle or thick shrub. During a summer, a pair may have two broods of 3 to 5 baby buntings each. Lazuli buntings live during the spring and summer in North Central Washington, in open, brushy canyons, at the lower edge of the ponderosa pine zone, and in streamside thickets. A male lazuli bunting has been seen, and heard singing, every spring for more than 15 years in Number 2 Canyon, west of Wenatchee. Look for them on the hillsides of Nahahum and Ollala Canyons.

The need for food compels many birds, including lazuli buntings, to migrate. They live in the fall and winter in Mexico, eating insects and seeds, then return north again in the springtime.