I was working in my home office last Tuesday, when my eye was drawn outside, to a spot of blue. Too dark for a bluebird, and anyway, our neighborhood isn’t bluebird habitat. It could only be one bird: an Indigo Bunting.

This wasn’t a first for me. I saw one several years ago while visiting friends on the north shore of Lake Superior, but this was the first time I’d seen one in Rhode Island. I went back to my work and when I was done, I went into the living room and glanced at the back deck and there he was.

The bunting has returned every day, feeding on sunflower seed and suet.

But wait. There’s more! The same day the bunting arrived, I also had several Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, females and males.

Maybe it was because we’d had a storm the day before, (or it was kismet) but my feeding station looked like a photo on a bag of bird seed. The bright yellow goldfinches, the red house finches and even redder cardinals, the bunting, grosbeaks, red-breasted, hairy and downy woodpeckers, a yellow-bellied sapsucker, white-breasted nuthatches, chickadees, titmice, a PAIR of flickers and mourning doves. It was amazing.

I will be taking down my feeders very soon, but what a way to end the season.