Indigo bunting

Passerina cyanea (male)

According to my field guide this bird does not actually have blue pigment in his feathers. Sunlight is refracted within the structure of his mostly black feathers making them appear blue. Like most bird species, the males get all the glorious plumage. The poor female Indigo Bunting is a dull brown. Male birds are at their most brilliant blue during breeding season (May-Sept).

Indigo Buntings can live up to 10 years in the wild. These are migratory birds who fly as many as 2000 miles between their wintering and breeding grounds. A group of buntings are collectively known as a "decoration", "mural", and "sacrifice" of buntings.

From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

The Indigo Bunting migrates at night, using the stars for guidance. It learns its orientation to the night sky from its experience as a young bird observing the stars.

Prefers old fields, roadsides, and abandoned land to urban areas, intensely farmed areas, or deep forests.

They breed in brushy and weedy areas along edges of cultivated land, woods, roads, power line right-of-way, and in open deciduous woods and old fields. Winters in weedy fields, citrus orchards, and weedy cropland.

Indigo buntings eat small insects, spiders, seeds, buds, and berries.