“DAD, look! A bright blue bird,” my daughter yelled to me from the living room.

“Where?” I replied, running to the glass. Then, for just a moment, I saw a flash of blue and black as the mysterious visitor darted across the yard and behind our gum tree.

A second later, I saw it again, just barely, in the brush at the base of the tree.

“Good eye, girl,” I said to my daughter, “keep watching – I’ll get the camera.”

I did, then attempted to zoom in and take a shot of the reticent bird through the front glass. The focus was terrible and the bird was moving here and there, so this was the best shot I could take before it disappeared:

I know.

That photo looks something like this:

Or this:

But seriously!

That bird was there, man!

And really blue!

And it was REAL!

I did some looking online and it seems to be an Indigo Bunting.

Image copyright Rick Carlson – see more at www.whatbird.com.

I found that photo at this WhatBird.com, which also has a really nice bird ID filter where you can select regions, colors and body shapes until you find a species you’ve spotting.

According to their page on our likely visitor, Indigo Buntings prefer “brushy slopes, old pastures and fields grown to scrub, woodland clearings, and forest edges adjacent to fields.”

That perfectly describes my up-and-coming food forest. Indigo buntings also eat “insects, larvae, grains, seeds and berries.”

Sounds like a healthy diet to me… and one I don’t really mind them indulging.

There’s a great joy in seeing things I’ve never seen before – and it happens all the time now that I’ve quit cutting my grass, added diversity by planting lots of different plants, and kept this little corner of the globe free from chemicals and poisons.

Welcome, lovely friend. You’re safe here.