276 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



SIALIA CURRUCOIDES (Bechslein) 



MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRD 



HABITS 



The mountain bluebird is not so gaudily or so richly colored as 

 the western bluebird, but it is no less pleasing in its coat of exquisite 

 turquoise-blue. As it flies from some low perch to hover like a big 

 blue butterfly over an open field, it seems to carry on its wings the 

 heavenly blue of the clearest sky, and one stands entranced with 

 the purity of its beauty. As Mrs. Wheelock (1904) says: "No words 

 can describe his brilliancy in the breeding season, as he flies through 

 the sunny clearings of the higher Sierra Nevada, or sits like a bright 

 blue flower against the dark green of the pines." The male certainly 

 is a lovely bird, and the female is hardly less charming in her coat 

 of soft, blended colors. 



It occupies a wide breeding range throughout the western half of 

 Canada and the United States, west of the Great Plains. It was 

 formerly called the Arctic bluebird, a decided misnomer, for it is in 

 no sense an Arctic bird, being found in the northern part of its range 

 only in summer. Another old name, Rocky Mountain bluebird, was 

 more appropriate, for it is one of the characteristic birds of the 

 western mountains. Using the latter designation, H. W. Henshaw 

 (1875), who recorded it as very common in Utah and Colorado, and 

 in northern New Mexico and Arizona, says: "I have usually found 

 it during the breeding season in the wild, elevated districts, from 

 7,000 feet upward, where it frequents the more open spaces, where 

 aspen groves alternate with the remains of pine woods, the broken 

 stubs of which, charred by fires which have swept through again 

 and again, are seen on every side. * * * In the neighborhood 

 of Santa Fe, they breed commonly, and here were noticed in the 

 vicinity of houses, seeming in fact to be as familiar and as much at 

 home as does our own bluebird in the East." 



Robert Ridgway (1877) writes of it in the same general region: 

 "Its favorite haunts are the higher portions of the desert ranges of 

 the Great Basin, where there is little water, and no timber other 

 than the usual scant groves of stunted cedars, pinon, or mountain 

 mahogany." 



Mrs. Bailey (1928) says that, in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains 

 in New Mexico, "we found a nest in a grove of aspens on the edge 

 of the open grassy mesa at 10,300 feet, we found families of old and 

 young going about together at 11,000 feet. * * * On August 11, 

 we were much pleased to find a flock of the Bluebirds, together with 

 Red-shafted Flickers and Chipping Sparrows, at 12,300 feet, on a 



