Biueijird WESTERN BIRDS 



the second set were ready to feed, the first nestlings 

 turned in and helped feed them until they were able to 

 care for themselves. Surely a Utopian condition in the 

 bird world. 



We are glad that in Washington and Oregon the Blue- 

 birds nest in boxes and in many ways seem like the 

 birds of our childhood days. 



In Sycamore Park, adjoining the Arroyo Seco, in Los 

 Angeles, for several years now the Western Bluebirds 

 have made their homes in the old trees and raised their 

 young. This is a rather unusual, but very delightful, 

 situation, which we hope will be continued and extended. 

 I found the birds to be very tame, paying not the least 

 attention to me as they gleaned from the lawn, or air, 

 a few feet away. The nest was about thirty feet high 

 in a cavity at the top of a sycamore tree that grew beside 

 a busy thoroughfare. The female did all the brood- 

 ing, leaving the nest only when the male flew up beside 

 it, when she joined him in a foraging expedition. By the 

 time the young had hatched the small twigs had grown 

 up about the nest so that it was hard to watch operations. 

 I knew, however, that both birds were kept busy feeding 

 and that when this brood was launched upon the world, 

 they undertook another nest in the same place. As I 

 have said before, there was no singing, but only the 

 softest note that many persons would not even have 

 heard. 



Farther up the State, in Tulare County, one September 

 I was filled with delight to see large flocks of these beau- 

 tiful blue birds along the roadway in the wooded moun- 

 tains. They were perching on old stumps, trees, and 

 bushes, flying before and around us as we journeyed 

 downward. 



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