Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.

It’s no surprise that a songbird named for the gemstone lapis lazuli is a looker. It’s one of those birds that makes a casual birder’s heart skip a beat. It even graces the cover of David Allen Sibley’s Birds West field guide. This color column is no slouch, either, what with those beautiful bands of blue. 💎💙

Aesthetics aside, I want to highlight an especially fascinating aspect of this bird’s behavior. Researchers have learned that each male two years and older sings an individual song, one that no other adult lazuli bunting will sing…at least, not exactly. When yearling males first arrive on their breeding grounds, they don’t yet have their song and they don’t sing a song passed down by their father. Instead, they start copying the songs of other adult males in the area, but soon begin rearranging the parts into something novel. Each bunting’s song is composed of different syllables that the younger birds reorder in a kind of “cut-and-paste” approach. Rarely, a young male will copy an older male’s song almost exactly, but a new song composed of remixed fragments is more typical. Researchers call the lazuli bunting songs “acoustic barcodes.” Each adult male two years or older has just one song that researchers call the crystallized song. These crystallized songs are usually is retained for life. This song copying can produce song neighborhoods, meaning songs of neighboring males are more related to one another than songs of males separated by significant distance. 

Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).

Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.