Elayne Metter and I were birding at Meadowbrook Park in Howard County 
this morning, and we saw an unusually-colored bird neither of us had 
ever seen before. It was mostly light blue -- the color immediately 
struck me as "parakeet blue." The blue was exactly the color of the 
breast of the parakeet on this page:  http://tinyurl.com/rk6wc

 From breast to undertail coverts, the bird was much lighter -- either 
white or extremely pale ice-blue. It flew from one tree to another, 
waited briefly, and then flew out of view, so we got a very good but 
very short look. Consequently we're not sure about other field marks. 
One of us had the impression that it had some light patterning on the 
wings (possibly white wing bars); the other felt they were solid blue.

We both agreed that the bird had a very upright posture when it sat on a 
branch, and that it was generally the size and shape of an Indigo Bunting.

We had seen an adult male Indigo Bunting not too far from there, and 
Elayne thought this might be a juvenile Indigo Bunting in the process of 
molting and changing color. But there wasn't a single feather of brown 
or deep indigo -- the bird was all light blue above and white or 
ice-blue below -- and the colors were very smooth and even, not patchy.

I thought for a second it might be an escaped parakeet, but I grew up 
with parakeets (which is why I immediately thought of the color as 
"parakeet blue") and we both believe this bird had a passerine bill, not 
a flat, hooked parrot bill, and it did not have the very long, narrow 
tail of a parakeet. Elayne says the bill was the same as an Indigo 
Bunting's, while I didn't notice its shape other than that it was 
passerine-style rather than parrot-style.

Does anyone have the slightest idea of what this light-blue bird might be?

Sherry
Howard County